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 headstrong 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 has 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 LIII
The Track
Mr. 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 to-day and gone to-morrow-
