Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

of which he is as innocent as you or me. It

won’t do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law

and lawyers,” exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the

latter form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership

with truth and justice for ever and a day.

 

“He shall have,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, “all the help that can be

got for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and

thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the

whole family will do their best. I—I know something, my dear; and

will make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these

years, and finding him in a jail at last.”

 

The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper’s manner in saying

this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a

powerful impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that

she refers them all to her sorrow for her son’s condition. And yet

Mrs. Bagnet wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so

distractedly, “My Lady, my Lady, my Lady!” over and over again.

 

The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a

chaise departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of

trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the

realities of day. London reached, the travellers alight, the old

housekeeper in great tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite

fresh and collected—as she would be if her next point, with no new

equipage and outfit, were the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of

Ascension, Hong Kong, or any other military station.

 

But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is confined,

the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its usual

accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece of

old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher

is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has

ruffled it these many years.

 

Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in

the act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of

entreaty to him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers

them to enter as he shuts the door.

 

So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be

alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old

housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are

quite enough for Mrs. Bagnet’s confirmation, even if she could see

the mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt

their relationship.

 

Not a rustle of the housekeeper’s dress, not a gesture, not a word

betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all

unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her

emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.

Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of

grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no

return since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son

loved less, and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they

speak in such touching language that Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes brim up

with tears and they run glistening down her sun-brown face.

 

“George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!”

 

The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls

down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance,

whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts

his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and

raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.

 

“My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite

still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such

a man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew

he must be, if it pleased God he was alive!”

 

She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All

that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the

whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes

with her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the

best of old girls as she is.

 

“Mother,” says the trooper when they are more composed, “forgive me

first of all, for I know my need of it.”

 

Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always

has done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will,

these many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has

never believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this

happiness—and she is an old woman now and can’t look to live very

long—she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had

had her senses, as her beloved son George.

 

“Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my

reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a

purpose in me too. When I left home I didn’t care much, mother—I

am afraid not a great deal—for leaving; and went away and ‘listed,

harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no

not I, and that nobody cared for me.”

 

The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but

there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of

expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in

which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.

 

“So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had

‘listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time

I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off;

and when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year,

when I might be better off; and when that year was out again,

perhaps I didn’t think much about it. So on, from year to year,

through a service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to

ask myself why should I ever write.”

 

“I don’t find any fault, child—but not to ease my mind, George?

Not a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?”

 

This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up

with a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.

 

“Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small

consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,

respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance

North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and

famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made

like him, but self-unmade—all my earlier advantages thrown away,

all my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what

unfitted me for most things that I could think of. What business

had I to make myself known? After letting all that time go by me,

what good could come of it? The worst was past with you, mother.

I knew by that time (being a man) how you had mourned for me, and

wept for me, and prayed for me; and the pain was over, or was

softened down, and I was better in your mind as it was.”

 

The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his

powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.

 

“No, I don’t say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to

be so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear

mother, some good might have come of it to myself—and there was

the meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have

purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney

Wold; you would have brought me and my brother and my brother’s

family together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do

something for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how

could any of you feel sure of me when I couldn’t so much as feel

sure of myself? How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and

a discredit to you an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance

and a discredit to himself, excepting under discipline? How could

I look my brother’s children in the face and pretend to set them an

example—I, the vagabond boy who had run away from home and been

the grief and unhappiness of my mother’s life? ‘No, George.’ Such

were my words, mother, when I passed this in review before me: ‘You

have made your bed. Now, lie upon it.’”

 

Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at

the old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, “I

told you so!” The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her

interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke

between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards

repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never

failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances,

to resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.

 

“This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best

amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I

should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once

down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old

comrade’s wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I

thank her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my

heart and might.”

 

To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.

 

And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear

recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy

close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he

must be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and

influence, that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers

that can be got, that he must act in this serious plight as he

shall be advised to act and must not be self-willed, however right,

but must promise to think only of his poor old mother’s anxiety and

suffering until he is released, or he will break her heart.

 

“Mother, ‘tis little enough to consent to,” returns the trooper,

stopping her with a kiss; “tell me what I shall do, and I’ll make a

late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you’ll take care of my

mother, I know?”

 

A very hard poke from the old girl’s umbrella.

 

“If you’ll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss

Summerson, she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will

give her the best advice and assistance.”

 

“And, George,” says the old lady, “we must send with all haste for

your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me—out in

the world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don’t know much of

it myself—and will be of great service.”

 

“Mother,” returns the trooper, “is it too soon to ask a favour?”

 

“Surely not, my dear.”

 

“Then grant me this one great favour. Don’t let my brother know.”

 

“Not know what, my dear?”

 

“Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can’t bear it; I can’t