The Solitary House (157 page)

He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further necessity to wait a bit.

“I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don’t intend to say,” looking round upon us, with his powerful arms akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, “that I am more partial to being hanged than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I say it’s true; and when they tell me, ‘whatever you say will be used,’ I tell them I don’t mind that; I mean it to be used. If they can’t make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it’s worth nothing to me.”

Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table, and finished what he had to say.

“I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. That’s the plain state of the matter, as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life, beyond my duty as a soldier; and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer—it don’t take a rover, who has knocked about so much as myself, so very long to recover from a crash—I worked my way round to what you find me now. As such, I shall remain. No relations will be disgraced by me, or made unhappy for me, and—and that’s all I’ve got to say.”

The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less prepossessing appearance at first sight, and a weather-tanned, bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He now shook them cordially by the hand, and said, “Miss Summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet.”

Mr. Bagnet made a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a curtsy.

“Real good friends of mine they are,” said Mr. George. “It was at their house I was taken.”

“With a second-hand wiolinceller,” Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his head angrily. “Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object to.”

“Mat,” said Mr. George, “you have heard pretty well all I have been saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your approval?”

Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. “Old girl,” he said. “Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval.”

“Why, George,” exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea and sugar, and a brown loaf, “you ought to know it don’t. You ought to know it’s enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won’t be got off this way, and you won’t be got off that way—what do you mean by such picking and choosing? It’s stuff and nonsense, George.”

“Don’t be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet,” said the trooper, lightly.

“Oh! Bother your misfortunes,” cried Mrs. Bagnet, “if they don’t make you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly, as I have been to hear you talk this day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers, if the gentleman recommended them to you.”

“This is a very sensible woman,” said my guardian. “I hope you will persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet.”

“Persuade him, sir?” she returned. “Lord bless you, no. You don’t know George. Now, there!” Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him out with both her bare brown hands. “There he stands! As self-willed and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human creature under Heaven, out of patience! You could as soon take up and shoulder an eight-and-forty pounder by your own strength, as turn that man, when he has got a thing into his head, and fixed it there. Why, don’t I know him!” cried Mrs. Bagnet. “Don’t I know you, George! You
don’t mean to set up for a new character with
me
, after all these years, I hope?”

Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, who shook his head at the trooper several times, as a silent recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at me; and I understood from the play of her eyes, that she wished me to do something, though I did not comprehend what.

“But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,” said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork, looking at me again; “and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well as I do, they’ll give up talking to you too. If you are not too head-strong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is.”

“I accept it with many thanks,” returned the trooper.

“Do you though, indeed?” said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-humouredly. “I’m sure I’m surprised at that. I wonder you don’t starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps you’ll set your mind upon
that
, next.” Here she again looked at me; and I now perceived, from her glances at the door and at me, by turns, that she wished us to retire, and to await her following us, outside the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian, and Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.

“We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George,” said I; “and we shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable.”

“More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can’t find me,” he returned.

“But more persuadable we can, I hope,” said I. “And let me entreat you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery, and the discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed, may be of the last importance to others besides yourself.”

He heard me respectfully, but without much heeding these words, which I spoke, a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, which seemed to catch his attention all at once.

“ ’Tis curious,” said he. “And yet I thought so at the time!”

My guardian asked him what he meant.

“Why, sir,” he answered, “when my ill-fortune took me to the dead man’s staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson’s go by me in the dark, that I had half a mind to speak to it.”

For an instant, I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since, and hope I shall never feel again.

“It came downstairs as I went up,” said the trooper, “and crossed the moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to it. However, it was nothing to do with the present subject, excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment, that it came into my head.”

I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after this: it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon me from the first of following the investigation, was, without my distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased; and that I was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my being afraid.

We three went out of the prison, and walked up and down at some short distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not waited long, when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too, and quickly joined us.

There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes, and her face was flushed and hurried. “I didn’t let George see what I thought about it, you know, miss,” was her first remark when she came up; “but he’s in a bad way, poor old fellow!”

“Not with care and prudence, and good help,” said my guardian.

“A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir,” returned Mrs. Bagnet, hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak; “but I am uneasy for him. He has been so careless, and said so much that he never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep.”

“With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a boy,” Mr. Bagnet added, with great solemnity.

“Now, I tell you, miss,” said Mrs. Bagnet; “and when I say miss, I mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall, and I’ll tell you!”

Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place, and was at first too breathless to proceed; occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, “Old girl! Tell ’em!”

“Why, then, miss,” the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet for more air, “you could as soon move Dover Castle as move George on this point, unless you had got a new power to move him with. And I have got it!”

“You are a jewel of a woman,” said my guardian. “Go on!”

“Now, I tell you, miss,” she proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, “that what he says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don’t know of him, but he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to anybody else, and it warn’t for nothing that he once spoke to my Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers’ heads. For fifty pounds he had seen his mother that day. She’s alive, and must be brought here straight!”

Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth, and began pinning up her skirts all round, a little higher than the level of her grey cloak; which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.

“Lignum,” said Mrs. Bagnet, “you take care of the children, old man, and give me the umbrella! I’m away to Lincolnshire, to bring that old lady here.”

“But, bless the woman!” cried my guardian with his hand in his pocket, “how is she going? What money has she got?”

Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts, and brought forth a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings, and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.

“Never you mind for me, miss. I’m a soldier’s wife, and accustomed to travel my own way. Lignum, old boy,” kissing him, “one for yourself; three for the children. Now, I’m away into Lincolnshire after George’s mother!”

And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a sturdy pace, and turned the corner and was gone.

“Mr. Bagnet,” said my guardian. “Do you mean to let her go in that way?”

“Can’t help it,” he returned. “Made her way home once. From another quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella. Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,
I’ll
do it. She does it.”

“Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks,” rejoined my guardian, “and it is impossible to say more for her.”

“She’s Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion,” said Mr. Bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder, as he went his way also. “And there’s not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”

CHAPTER 53

THE TRACK

M
r. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems to rise to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict, that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a terrible avenger will be heard of before long.

Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be
severe upon the follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses, and strolls about an infinity of streets: to outward appearance rather languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition towards his species, and will drink with most of them. He is free with his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation—but, through the placid stream of his life, there glides an under-current of forefinger.

Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he is here today and gone tomorrow—but, very unlike man indeed, he is here again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s house in town; and tomorrow morning he will be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards, he and the Roman will be alone together, comparing forefingers.

It is likely but that these occupations are irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs. Bucket—a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but which has paused at the level of a clever amateur—he holds himself aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for companionship and conversation.