The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Hem!” said Mr. George. “You remember, miss, that we passed some conversation on a certain man this morning?—Gridley,” in a low whisper behind his hand.

  “Yes,” said I.

  “He is hiding at my place. I couldn’t mention it. Hadn’t his authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her. He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as good a friend to him here. I came down to look for her; for when I sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the muffled drums.”

  “Shall I tell her?” said I.

  “Would you be so good?” he returned, with a glance of something like apprehension at Miss Flite. “It’s a Providence I met you, miss; I doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady.” And he put one hand in his breast, and stood upright in a martial attitude, as I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind errand.

  “My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!” she exclaimed. “Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the greatest pleasure.”

  “He is living concealed at Mr. George’s,” said I, “Hush! This is Mr. George.”

  “In—deed!” returned Miss Flite. “Very proud to have the honour! A military man, my dear. You know, a perfect General!” she whispered to me.

  Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often, that it was no easy matter to get her out of the Court. When this was at last done, and addressing Mr. George as “General,” she gave him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was so discomposed, and begged me so respectfully “not to desert him,” that I could not make up my mind to do it; especially as Miss Flite was always tractable with me, and as she too said, “Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of course.” As Richard seemed quite willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that Gridley’s mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon, after hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone, and why. Mr. George sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and we sent it off by a ticketporter.

  We then took a hackney-coach, and drove away to the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr. George apologized, and soon came to the Shooting Gallery, the door of which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman, with grey hair, wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-headed cane, addressed him.

  “I ask your pardon, my good friend,” said he; “but is this George’s Shooting Gallery?”

  “It is, sir,” returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters in which that inscription was painted on the white-washed wall.

  “Oh! To be sure!” said the old gentleman, following his eyes. “Thank you. Have you rung the bell?”

  “My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell.”

  “Oh, indeed?” said the old gentleman. “Your name is George? Then I am here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?”

  “No, sir. You have the advantage of me.”

  “Oh, indeed?” said the old gentleman. “Then it was your young man who came for me. I am a physician, and was requested—five minutes ago—to come and visit a sick man, at George’s Shooting Gallery.”

  “The muffled drums,” said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me, and gravely shaking his head. “It’s quite correct, sir. Will you please to walk in.”

  The door being at that moment opened, by a very singular-looking little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face, and hands, and dress, were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into a large building with bare brick walls; where there were targets, and guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared to vanish by magic, and to leave another and quite a different man in his place.

  “Now lookee here, George,” said the man, turning quickly round upon him, and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. “You know me, and I know you. You’re a man of the world, and I’m a man of the world. My name’s Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit.”

  Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lips and shook his head.

  “Now, George,” said the other, keeping close to him, “you’re a sensible man and a well-conducted man; that’s what you are, beyond a doubt. And mind you, I don’t talk to you as a common character, because you have served your country, and you know that when duty calls we must obey. Consequently, you’re very far from wanting to give trouble. If I required assistance, you’d assist me; that’s what you’d do. Phil Squod, don’t you go a-sidling round the gallery like that”;—the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that looked threatening: “because I know you, and won’t have it.”

  “Phil!” said Mr. George.

  “Yes, guv’ner.”

  “Be quiet.”

  The little man, with a low growl, stood still.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Bucket, “you’ll excuse anything that may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name’s Inspector Bucket of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where my man is, because I was on the roof last night and saw him through the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,” pointing; “that’s where he is—on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but, you know me, and you know I don’t want to take any uncomfortable measures. You give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier, mind you, likewise!), that it’s honourable between us two, and I’ll accommodate you to the utmost of my power.”

  “I give it,” was the reply. “But it wasn’t handsome in you, Mr. Bucket.”

  “Gammon, George! Not handsome?” said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his broad breast again, and shaking hands with him. “I don’t say it wasn’t handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life Guardsman! Why, he’s a model of the whole British army in himself, ladies and gentlemen. I’d give a fifty-pun’ note to be such a figure of a man!”

  The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of entering into a little light conversation: asking me if I were afraid of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those rifles, and what it might be worth, firsthand; telling him, in return, that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was naturally so amiable, that he might have been a young woman; and making himself generally agreeable.

  After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and Richard and I were going quietly away, when Mr. George came after us. He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips, when the bell was rung, and my guardian appeared; “on the chance,” he slightly observed, “of being able to do any little thing for a poor fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself.” We all four went back together, and went into the place where Gridley was.

  It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high, and only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high g
allery roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had looked down. The sun was low—near setting—and its light came redly in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire—dressed much as we had seen him last, but so changed, that at first I recognized no likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.

  He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were covered with manuscript papers, and with worn pens, and a medley of such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little mad woman were side by side, and, as it were, alone. She sat on a chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.

  His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form and colour, is such a picture of it, as he was of the man from Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.

  He inclined his head to Richard and me, and spoke to my guardian.

  “Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you.”

  They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of comfort to him.

  “It may seem strange to you, sir,” returned Gridley; “I should not have liked to see you, if this had been the first time of our meeting. But, you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so I don’t mind your seeing me, this wreck.”

  “You have been courageous with them, many and many a time,” returned my guardian.

  “Sir, I have been”; with a faint smile. “I told you what would come of it, when I ceased to be so; and, see here! Look at us—look at us!” He drew the hand Miss Flite held, through her arm, and brought her something nearer to him.

  “This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken.”

  “Accept my blessing, Gridley,” said Miss Flite, in tears. “Accept my blessing!”

  “I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr. Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were, until I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have been wearing out, I don’t know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody, here, will lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so many years.”

  Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner, by the door, good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.

  “Come, come!” he said from his corner. “Don’t go on in that way, Mr. Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You’ll lose your temper with the whole round of ’em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score of warrants yet, if I have luck.”

  He only shook his head.

  “Don’t shake your head,” said Mr. Bucket. “Nod it; that’s what I want to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had together! Haven’t I seen you in the Fleet over and over again, for contempt? Haven’t I come into Court, twenty afternoons, for no other purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don’t you remember, when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold up, sir!”

  “What are you going to do about him?” asked George, in a low voice.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Bucket, in the same tone. Then resuming his encouragement, he pursued aloud:

  “Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After dodging me for all these weeks, and forcing me to climb the roof here like a Tom Cat, and to come to see you as a Doctor? That ain’t like being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You want excitement, you know, to keep you up; that’s what you want. You’re used to it, and you can’t do without it. I couldn’t myself. Very well, then; here’s this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since. What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and having a good angry argument before the Magistrates? It’ll do you good; it’ll freshen you up, and get you into training for another turn at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your energy talk of giving in. You mustn’t do that. You’re half the fun of the fair, in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a hand, and let’s see now whether he won’t be better up than down.”

  “He is very weak,” said the trooper, in a low voice.

  “Is he?” returned Bucket, anxiously. “I only want to rouse him. I don’t like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would cheer him up more than anything, if I could make him a little waxy with me. He’s welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I shall never take advantage of it.”

  The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my ears.

  “O no, Gridley!” she cried, as he fell heavily and calmly back from before her, “not without my blessing. After so many years!”

  The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and the shadow had crept upward. But, to me, the shadow of that pair, one living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard’s departure, than the darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard’s farewell words I heard it echoed:

  “Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!”

  CHAPTER 25

  MRS. SNAGSBY SEES IT ALL

  There is disquietude in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Black suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook’s Courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr. Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.

  For Tom-all-Alone’s and Lincoln’s Inn Fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. Snagsby’s imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls through the Law Stationery business at wild speed, all round the clock. Even in the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes, and stares at the kitchen wall.

  Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with. Something is wrong, somewhere; but what something, what may come of it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter, is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by the best and closest of his customers, whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr. Bucket with his forefinger, and his confidential manner impossible to be evaded or declined; persuade him that he is a party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up—Mr. Bucket only knows whom.
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br />   For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many men unknown do), and says, “Is Mr. Snagsby in?” or words to that innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby’s heart knocks hard at his guilty breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries, that when they are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the counter, and asking the young dogs what they mean by it, and why they can’t speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in walking into Mr. Snagsby’s sleep, and terrifying him with unaccountable questions; so that often, when the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his little woman shaking him, and saying “What’s the matter with the man!”

  The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To know that he is always keeping a secret from her; that he has, under all circumstances, to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head; gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who has a reservation from his master, and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye.

  These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not lost upon her. They impel her to say, “Snagsby has something on his mind!” And thus suspicion gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural and short as from Cook’s Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. Snagsby’s breast—prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby’s pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby’s letters; to private researches in the Day Book and Ledger, till, cashbox, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

  Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert, that the house becomes ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The ’prentices think somebody may have been murdered there, in by-gone times. Guster holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where they were found floating among the orphans), that there is buried money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years, because he said the Lord’s Prayer backwards.