CHAPTER XXI

The Smallweed Family

In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one

of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin

Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as

Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and

its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street,

always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like

a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree

whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of

youth.

There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several

generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child,

until Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother, now living, became weak in her

intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With

such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory,

understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall

asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother has

undoubtedly brightened the family.

Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a

helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,

limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,

the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of

the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and

other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used

to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in

his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life

he has never bred a single butterfly.

The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of

Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting

species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired

into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan’s

god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.

Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all

the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke

something—something necessary to his existence, therefore it

couldn’t have been his heart—and made an end of his career. As his

character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a

complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient

people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an

example of the failure of education.

His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of

“going out” early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp

scrivener’s office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman

improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and

developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the

discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as

his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and

anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and

marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed,

twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this

family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late

to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has

discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books,

fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities

whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born

to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced

have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something

depressing on their minds.

At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below

the level of the street—a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only

ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest

of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no

bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed’s

mind—seated in two black horsehair porter’s chairs, one on each side

of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while

away the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the

pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed’s usual occupation

to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a

sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when

it is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed’s seat and guarded

by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain

property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with

which he is always provided in order that he may have something to

throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she

makes an allusion to money—a subject on which he is particularly

sensitive.

“And where’s Bart?” Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart’s

twin sister.

“He an’t come in yet,” says Judy.

“It’s his tea-time, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“How much do you mean to say it wants then?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Hey?”

“Ten minutes.” (Loud on the part of Judy.)

“Ho!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Ten minutes.”

Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at

the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and

screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, “Ten

ten-pound notes!”

Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.

“Drat you, be quiet!” says the good old man.

The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles

up Mrs. Smallweed’s head against the side of her porter’s chair and

causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly

unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr.

Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter’s chair like a

broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a

mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not

present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two

operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like

a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some

indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and

the sharer of his life’s evening again sit fronting one another in

their two porter’s chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten

on their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.

Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so

indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded

into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions,

while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness

to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might

walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without

exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing

circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of

brown stuff.

Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at

any game. She once or twice fell into children’s company when she was

about ten years old, but the children couldn’t get on with Judy, and

Judy couldn’t get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another

species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is

very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen

the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of

anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.

If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way,

modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled

all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is

Judy.

And her twin brother couldn’t wind up a top for his life. He knows no

more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows

of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at

cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much

the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an

opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of

Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining

enchanter.

Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron

tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she

puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a

small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as

it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.

“Charley, do you mean?” says Judy.

“Hey?” from Grandfather Smallweed.

“Charley, do you mean?”

This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as

usual at the trivets, cries, “Over the water! Charley over the water,

Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the

water, over the water to Charley!” and becomes quite energetic about

it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently

recovered his late exertion.

“Ha!” he says when there is silence. “If that’s her name. She eats a

deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep.”

Judy, with her brother’s wink, shakes her head and purses up her

mouth into no without saying it.

“No?” returns the old man. “Why not?”

“She’d want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less,” says Judy.

“Sure?”

Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes

the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts

it into slices, “You, Charley, where are you?” Timidly obedient to

the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with

her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of

them, appears, and curtsys.

“What work are you about now?” says Judy, making an ancient snap at

her like a very sharp old beldame.

“I’m a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,” replies Charley.

“Mind you do it thoroughly, and don’t loiter. Shirking won’t do for

me. Make haste! Go along!” cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground.

“You girls are more trouble than you’re worth, by half.”

On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the

butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,

looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens

the street-door.

“Aye, aye, Bart!” says Grandfather Smallweed. “Here you are, hey?”

“Here I am,” says Bart.

“Been along with your friend again, Bart?”

Small nods.

“Dining at his expense, Bart?”

Small nods again.

“That’s right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take

warning by his foolish example. That’s the use of such a friend. The

only use you can put him to,” says the venerable sage.

His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he

might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight

wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces

then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs.

Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the

trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a

large black draught.

“Yes, yes,” says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of

wisdom. “That’s such advice as your father would have given you,

Bart. You never saw your father. More’s the pity. He was my true

son.” Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly

pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.

“He was my true son,” repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread

and butter on his knee, “a good accountant, and died fifteen years

ago.”

Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with

“Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen

hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!” Her

worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately

discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her

chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after

visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is

particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because

the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and

gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters

violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the

contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure

is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if

he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family

circle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely

shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is

restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps

with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again,

ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.

Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is

sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it

up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious

partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth

but the trivets. As thus: “If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he

might have been worth a deal of money—you brimstone chatterer!—but

just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been

making the foundations for, through many a year—you jade of a

magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!—he took ill and

died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of

business care—I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a

cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of

yourself!—and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip,

just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born—you

are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You’re a head of swine!”

Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect

in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups

and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little

charwoman’s evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the

iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of

loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.

“But your father and me were partners, Bart,” says the old gentleman,

“and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It’s rare

for you both that you went out early in life—Judy to the flower

business, and you to the law. You won’t want to spend it. You’ll get

your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will

go back to the flower business and you’ll still stick to the law.”

One might infer from Judy’s appearance that her business rather lay

with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been

apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A

close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her

brother’s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone,

some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some

resentful opinion that it is time he went.

“Now, if everybody has done,” says Judy, completing her preparations,

“I’ll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she

took it by herself in the kitchen.”

Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,

sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In

the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed

appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the

remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing

on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful,

evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached

by the oldest practitioners.

“Now, don’t stare about you all the afternoon,” cries Judy, shaking

her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance

which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, “but take your

victuals and get back to your work.”

“Yes, miss,” says Charley.

“Don’t say yes,” returns Miss Smallweed, “for I know what you girls

are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you.”

Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so

disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to

gormandize, which “in you girls,” she observes, is disgusting.

Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the

general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.

“See who it is, and don’t chew when you open it!” cries Judy.

The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss

Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the

bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups

into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers

the eating and drinking terminated.

“Now! Who is it, and what’s wanted?” says the snappish Judy.

It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or

ceremony, Mr. George walks in.

“Whew!” says Mr. George. “You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well!

Perhaps you do right to get used to one.” Mr. George makes the latter

remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.

“Ho! It’s you!” cries the old gentleman. “How de do? How de do?”

“Middling,” replies Mr. George, taking a chair. “Your granddaughter I

have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss.”

“This is my grandson,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “You ha’n’t seen

him before. He is in the law and not much at home.”

“My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his

sister. He is devilish like his sister,” says Mr. George, laying a

great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.

“And how does the world use you, Mr. George?” Grandfather Smallweed

inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.

“Pretty much as usual. Like a football.”

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with

crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and

powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to

a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits

forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space

for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside.

His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty

clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is

set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great

moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his

broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might

guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.

A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper

was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a

broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted

forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little

narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones,

are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the

middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands

upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he

remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family

and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.

“Do you rub your legs to rub life into ’em?” he asks of Grandfather

Smallweed after looking round the room.

“Why, it’s partly a habit, Mr. George, and—yes—it partly helps the

circulation,” he replies.

“The cir-cu-la-tion!” repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his

chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. “Not much of that, I

should think.”

“Truly I’m old, Mr. George,” says Grandfather Smallweed. “But I can

carry my years. I’m older than HER,” nodding at his wife, “and see

what she is? You’re a brimstone chatterer!” with a sudden revival of

his late hostility.

“Unlucky old soul!” says Mr. George, turning his head in that

direction. “Don’t scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor

cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up,

ma’am. That’s better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr.

Smallweed,” says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting

her, “if your wife an’t enough.”

“I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?” the old man hints

with a leer.

The colour of Mr. George’s face rather deepens as he replies, “Why

no. I wasn’t.”

“I am astonished at it.”

“So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to

have been one. But I wasn’t. I was a thundering bad son, that’s the

long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.”

“Surprising!” cries the old man.

“However,” Mr. George resumes, “the less said about it, the better

now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two

months’ interest! (Bosh! It’s all correct. You needn’t be afraid to

order the pipe. Here’s the new bill, and here’s the two months’

interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it

together in my business.)”

Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the

parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black

leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the

document he has just received, and from the other takes another

similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a

pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every

up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them

from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times

over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice,

and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to

be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite

concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and

fingers from it and answers Mr. George’s last remark by saying,

“Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir.

Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water

for Mr. George.”

The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all

this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern

cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but

leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller

to the parental bear.

“And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?” says Mr. George

with folded arms.

“Just so, just so,” the old man nods.

“And don’t you occupy yourself at all?”

“I watch the fire—and the boiling and the roasting—”

“When there is any,” says Mr. George with great expression.

“Just so. When there is any.”

“Don’t you read or get read to?”

The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. “No, no. We have

never been readers in our family. It don’t pay. Stuff. Idleness.

Folly. No, no!”

“There’s not much to choose between your two states,” says the

visitor in a key too low for the old man’s dull hearing as he looks

from him to the old woman and back again. “I say!” in a louder voice.

“I hear you.”

“You’ll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear.”

“My dear friend!” cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both

hands to embrace him. “Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in

the city that I got to lend you the money—HE might!”

“Oh! You can’t answer for him?” says Mr. George, finishing the

inquiry in his lower key with the words “You lying old rascal!”

“My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn’t trust him.

He will have his bond, my dear friend.”

“Devil doubt him,” says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a

tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the

brandy-and-water, he asks her, “How do you come here! You haven’t got

the family face.”

“I goes out to work, sir,” returns Charley.

The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,

with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.

“You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth

as much as it wants fresh air.” Then he dismisses her, lights his

pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed’s friend in the city—the one

solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman’s imagination.

“So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?”

“I think he might—I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,”

says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, “twenty times.”

Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing

over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers “Twenty

thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty

guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty—” and is then cut

short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular

experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it

crushes her in the usual manner.

“You’re a brimstone idiot. You’re a scorpion—a brimstone scorpion!

You’re a sweltering toad. You’re a chattering clattering broomstick

witch that ought to be burnt!” gasps the old man, prostrate in his

chair. “My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?”

Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the

other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by

the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his

chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or

no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him

into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently

enough to make his head roll like a harlequin’s, he puts him smartly

down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub

that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.

“O Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed. “That’ll do. Thank you, my dear

friend, that’ll do. Oh, dear me, I’m out of breath. O Lord!” And Mr.

Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear

friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.

The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and

falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the

philosophical reflection, “The name of your friend in the city begins

with a D, comrade, and you’re about right respecting the bond.”

“Did you speak, Mr. George?” inquires the old man.

The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow

on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his

other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a

martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.

Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of

smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.

“I take it,” he says, making just as much and as little change in his

position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a

round, full action, “that I am the only man alive (or dead either)

that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?”

“Well,” returns the old man, “it’s true that I don’t see company, Mr.

George, and that I don’t treat. I can’t afford to it. But as you, in

your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition—”

“Why, it’s not for the value of it; that’s no great thing. It was a

fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money.”

“Ha! You’re prudent, prudent, sir!” cries Grandfather Smallweed,

rubbing his legs.

“Very. I always was.” Puff. “It’s a sure sign of my prudence that I

ever found the way here.” Puff. “Also, that I am what I am.” Puff. “I

am well known to be prudent,” says Mr. George, composedly smoking. “I

rose in life that way.”

“Don’t be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet.”

Mr. George laughs and drinks.

“Ha’n’t you no relations, now,” asks Grandfather Smallweed with a

twinkle in his eyes, “who would pay off this little principal or who

would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in

the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be

sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha’n’t you no such relations,

Mr. George?”

Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, “If I had, I shouldn’t

trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.

It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted

the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he

never was a credit to and live upon them, but it’s not my sort. The

best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my

opinion.”

“But natural affection, Mr. George,” hints Grandfather Smallweed.

“For two good names, hey?” says Mr. George, shaking his head and

still composedly smoking. “No. That’s not my sort either.”

Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair

since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice

in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the

usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.

For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating

his late attentions.

“Ha!” he observes when he is in trim again. “If you could have traced

out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you. If

when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the

newspapers—when I say ‘our,’ I’m alluding to the advertisements of

my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital

in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give

me a lift with my little pittance—if at that time you could have

helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you.”

“I was willing enough to be ‘made,’ as you call it,” says Mr. George,

smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of

Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of

the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by

her grandfather’s chair, “but on the whole, I am glad I wasn’t now.”

“Why, Mr. George? In the name of—of brimstone, why?” says

Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.

(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed

in her slumber.)

“For two reasons, comrade.”

“And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the—”

“Of our friend in the city?” suggests Mr. George, composedly

drinking.

“Aye, if you like. What two reasons?”

“In the first place,” returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy

as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent

which of the two he addresses, “you gentlemen took me in. You

advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying

‘Once a captain, always a captain’) was to hear of something to his

advantage.”

“Well?” returns the old man shrilly and sharply.

“Well!” says Mr. George, smoking on. “It wouldn’t have been much to

his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and

judgment trade of London.”

“How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his

debts or compounded for ’em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us

immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no

return. If I sit here thinking of him,” snarls the old man, holding

up his impotent ten fingers, “I want to strangle him now.” And in a

sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs.

Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.

“I don’t need to be told,” returns the trooper, taking his pipe from

his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the

progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, “that

he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand

many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him

when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him

after he had run through everything and broken down everything

beneath him—when he held a pistol to his head.”

“I wish he had let it off,” says the benevolent old man, “and blown

his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!”

“That would have been a smash indeed,” returns the trooper coolly;

“any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone

by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to

a result so much to his advantage. That’s reason number one.”

“I hope number two’s as good?” snarls the old man.

“Why, no. It’s more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must

have gone to the other world to look. He was there.”

“How do you know he was there?”

“He wasn’t here.”

“How do you know he wasn’t here?”

“Don’t lose your temper as well as your money,” says Mr. George,

calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “He was drowned long

before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship’s side. Whether

intentionally or accidentally, I don’t know. Perhaps your friend in

the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?” he adds

after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the

empty pipe.

“Tune!” replied the old man. “No. We never have tunes here.”

“That’s the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it,

so it’s the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty

granddaughter—excuse me, miss—will condescend to take care of this

pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good

evening, Mr. Smallweed!”

“My dear friend!” the old man gives him both his hands.

“So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall

in a payment?” says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.

“My dear friend, I am afraid he will,” returns the old man, looking

up at him like a pygmy.

Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting

salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing

imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.

“You’re a damned rogue,” says the old gentleman, making a hideous

grimace at the door as he shuts it. “But I’ll lime you, you dog, I’ll

lime you!”

After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting

regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to

it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two

unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.

While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides

through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough

face. It is eight o’clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He

stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to

Astley’s Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and

the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye;

disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful

swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last

scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and

condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the

Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.

The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes

his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and

Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent

foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts,

fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses,

exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of

sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court

and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of

bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of

which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE’S

SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.

Into George’s Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are

gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for

rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,

and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these

sports or exercises being pursued in George’s Shooting Gallery

to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man

with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the

floor.

The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize

apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and

begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a

glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is

the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he

has been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed

together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance

that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of

business, at some odd time or times.

“Phil!” says the trooper in a quiet voice.

“All right!” cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.

“Anything been doing?”

“Flat as ever so much swipes,” says Phil. “Five dozen rifle and a

dozen pistol. As to aim!” Phil gives a howl at the recollection.

“Shut up shop, Phil!”

As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is

lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his

face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black

one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather

sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands

that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all

the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over.

He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he

had no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round

the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at

objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them,

which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally

called “Phil’s mark.”

This custodian of George’s Gallery in George’s absence concludes his

proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all

the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from

a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being

drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed

and Phil makes his.

“Phil!” says the master, walking towards him without his coat and

waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. “You

were found in a doorway, weren’t you?”

“Gutter,” says Phil. “Watchman tumbled over me.”

“Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning.”

“As nat’ral as possible,” says Phil.

“Good night!”

“Good night, guv’ner.”

Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to

shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his

mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the

rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the

skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to

bed too.