The Solitary House (101 page)

“You are well met, sir,” he returned. “And you, miss. Could you point a person out for me, I want? I don’t understand these places.”

Turning as he spoke, and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we were out of the press, in a corner behind a great red curtain.

“There’s a little cracked old woman,” he began, “that—”

I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me; having kept beside me all the time, and having called the attention of several of her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion), by whispering in their ears, “Hush! Fitz-Jarndyce on my left!”

“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 gallery 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.”