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

CHAPTER XXXIV

A Turn of the Screw

 

“Now, what,” says Mr. George, “may this be? Is it blank cartridge

or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?”

 

An open letter is the subject of the trooper’s speculations, and it

seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm’s length,

brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his

left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on

that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot

satisfy himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy

palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a

halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye.

Even that won’t do. “Is it,” Mr. George still muses, “blank

cartridge or ball?”

 

Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in

the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march

time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back

again to the girl he left behind him.

 

“Phil!” The trooper beckons as he calls him.

 

Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he

were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander

like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high

relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the

handle of the brush.

 

“Attention, Phil! Listen to this.”

 

“Steady, commander, steady.”

 

“‘Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity

for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months’

date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted,

for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence,

will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take

up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.’ What do

you make of that, Phil?”

 

“Mischief, guv’ner.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I think,” replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle

in his forehead with the brush-handle, “that mischeevious

consequences is always meant when money’s asked for.”

 

“Lookye, Phil,” says the trooper, sitting on the table. “First and

last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal

in interest and one thing and another.”

 

Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very

unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the

transaction as being made more promising by this incident.

 

“And lookye further, Phil,” says the trooper, staying his premature

conclusions with a wave of his hand. “There has always been an

understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And

it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?”

 

“I say that I think the times is come to a end at last.”

 

“You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.”

 

“Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?”

 

“The same.”

 

“Guv’ner,” says Phil with exceeding gravity, “he’s a leech in his

dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in

his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.”

 

Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after

waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of

him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he

has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical

medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady.

George, having folded the letter, walks in that direction.

 

“There IS a way, commander,” says Phil, looking cunningly at him,

“of settling this.”

 

“Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.”

 

Phil shakes his head. “No, guv’ner, no; not so bad as that. There

IS a way,” says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush;

“what I’m a-doing at present.”

 

“Whitewashing.”

 

Phil nods.

 

“A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the

Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off

my old scores? YOU’RE a moral character,” says the trooper, eyeing

him in his large way with no small indignation; “upon my life you

are, Phil!”

 

Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting

earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush

and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,

that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so

much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy

family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a

cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil,

with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, “Here’s the guv’ner,

Mrs. Bagnet! Here he is!” and the old girl herself, accompanied by

Mr. Bagnet, appears.

 

The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the

year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very

clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so

interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe

from another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and

an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a

part of the old girl’s presence out of doors. It is of no colour

known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle,

with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a

little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval

glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has

not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be

desired in an article long associated with the British army. The

old girl’s umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be

in need of stays—an appearance that is possibly referable to its

having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and

on journeys as a carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the

greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood,

but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out

joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the

attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she

never stirs abroad. Attended by these her trusty companions,

therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough

straw bonnet, Mrs. Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright,

in George’s Shooting Gallery.

 

“Well, George, old fellow,” says she, “and how do YOU do, this

sunshiny morning?”

 

Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long

breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a

faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such

positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough

bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses

her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable.

 

Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his