Bleak House
Dickens, Charles
Part - 4
Published: 1853 • Categorie(s): Fiction • Source: http://en.wikisource.org
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 46
Chapter 46
St op Hi m ! Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone’s, and Tom is fast asleep. Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit. But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge. It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should some-times set upon the British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom. A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some in-aptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it before. On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save him-self appears except in one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel- stained. She sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her. The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
“What is the matter?” “Nothing, sir.” “Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?” “I’m walting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house— not here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me.” “I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the street.” “Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.” A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patron-age or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily. “Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.” He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light. “Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore.” “It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear upon her cheek. “Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t hurt you.” “Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!” He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having care-fully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?” “How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished. “Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too.”
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again. “Where is he now?” asks the surgeon. “He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the lodging-house.” “He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. You have no young child?” The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it’s Liz’s.” “Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!” By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. “I sup-pose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks, good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and curtsys. “It’s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, as if you did.” “Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in return. Have you money for your lodging?” “Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all- Alone’s is still asleep, and nothing is astir. Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago. Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He can-not recall how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance. He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone’s in the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the woman. “Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop him, sir!” He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up. “Oh, you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!” “Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To be sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner.” “Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of that? Can’t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An’t I unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be? I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till I’m worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich warn’t my fault. I done nothink.
He wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. It ain’t wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I only wish I wos, myself. I don’t know why I don’t go and make a hole in the water, I’m sure I don’t.” He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?” To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily, “Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!” “What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?” “No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that’s the wonder of it.” Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle. “But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman. “Oh, you Jo! He was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn’t, and took him home—” Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror. “Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn’t hardly be known for the same young lady now if it wasn’t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?” demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking in-to passionate tears. The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans rattles.
Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually. “Richard told me—” He falters. “I mean, I have heard of this— don’t mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.” He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable that it absorbs the woman’s attention. “You hear what she says. But get up, get up!” Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right hand over his left and his left foot over his right. “You hear what she says, and I know it’s true. Have you been here ever since?” “Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone’s till this blessed morning,” replies Jo hoarsely. “Why have you come here now?” Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers, “I don’t know how to do nothink, and I can’t get nothink to do. I’m wery poor and ill, and I thought I’d come back here when there warn’t nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a- chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.” “Where have you come from?” Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner’s knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation. “Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?” “Tramp then,” says Jo. “Now tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you and take you home.”
Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he’d sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs. Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.” “No. I dustn’t,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I dustn’t, or I would.” “But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.” After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I’ll tell you something. I was took away. There!” “Took away? In the night?” “Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking over or hidden on the other side. “Who took you away?” “I dustn’t name him,” says Jo. “I dustn’t do it, sir. “But I want, in the young lady’s name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.” “Ah, but I don’t know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as he Don’t hear.” “Why, he is not in this place.” “Oh, ain’t he though?” says Jo. “He’s in all manner of places, all at wanst.” Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear. “Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?” “Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, ‘sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I’m a-moving on now. I’m a-moving on to the berryin ground—that’s the move as I’m up to.” “No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?” “Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was discharged, then giv me a little money—four half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he ses. ‘You hook it. You go and tramp,’ he ses. ‘You move on,’ he ses. ‘Don’t let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you’ll repent it.’ So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he’ll see me if I’m above ground,” concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations. Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, “He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one.” “Thankee, sir, thankee!” exclaims Jo. “There now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it’s all right. For you wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.” “Now, Jo,” says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, “come with me and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.” “I won’t, not unless I wos to see him a-coming, sir.” “Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman.” “Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.” She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, “Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!” nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone’s into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.
Chapter 47
Chapter 47
Jo's Will As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. “It surely is a strange fact,” he considers, “that in the heart of a civilized world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog.” But it is none the less a fact because of its strangeness, and the difficulty remains. At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering with a less divided attention what he shall do. A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and he be-gins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal. But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him. “I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir,” says Jo, soon putting down his food, “but I don’t know nothink—not even that. I don’t care for eating wittles nor yet for drinking on ’em.” And Jo stands shivering and looking at the breakfast wonderingly. Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. “Draw breath, Jo!” “It draws,” says Jo, “as heavy as a cart.” He might add, “And rattles like it,” but he only mutters, “I’m a- moving on, sir.” Allan looks about for an apothecary’s shop. There is none at hand, but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. “We may repeat that dose, Jo,” observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face. “So! Now we will take five minutes’ rest, and then go on again.” Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in the early sunshine, casting an occasional look to-wards him without appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its con-sequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has finished his story and his bread, they go on again. Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite, Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first fore-gathered. But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and with open arms.
“My dear physician!” cries Miss Flite. “My meritorious, distinguished, honourable officer!” She uses some odd expressions, but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be—more so than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a doorway, and tells her how he comes there. “Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me. Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider; but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley’s room. “Gridley!” exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth repetition of this remark. “Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear physician! General George will help us out.” It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and would be, though Miss Flite had not akeady run up-stairs to put on her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George, whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and they repair to the general’s. Fortunately it is not far. From the exterior of George’s Shooting Gallery, and the long entry, and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light shirt-sleeves. “Your servant, sir,” says Mr. George with a military salute. Good- humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He winds it up with another “Your servant, sir!” and another salute. ”
“Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?” says Mr. George. “I am proud to find I have the air of one,” returns Allan; “but I am only a sea-going doctor.” “Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket myself.” Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing. “You are very good, sir,” returns the trooper. “As I know by experience that it’s not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it’s equally agreeable to yourself—” and finishes the sentence by putting it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face. “And that’s the lad, sir, is it?” he inquires, looking along the entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes. “That’s he,” says Allan. “And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a workhouse, sup-posing I had the patience to be evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to get him into one, which is a system that I don’t take kindly to.” “No man does, sir,” returns Mr. George. “I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, be-cause he is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.” “I ask your pardon, sir,” says Mr. George. “But you have not mentioned that party’s name. Is it a secret, sir?” “The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket.” “Bucket the detective, sir?” “The same man.” “The man is known to me, sir,” returns the trooper after blowing out a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, “and the boy is so far correct that he undoubtedly is a—rum customer.”
Mr. George smokes with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence. “Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so. Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent people and Jo, Mr. George,” says Allan, following the direction of the trooper’s eyes along the entry, “have not been much acquainted, as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in this neighbour-hood who would receive him for a while on my paying for him beforehand?” As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man standing at the trooper’s elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted figure and countenance, into the trooper’s face. After a few more puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the little man winks up at the trooper. “Well, sir,” says Mr. George, “I can assure you that I would willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment’s notice. However, sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at your service.” With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole building at his visitor’s disposal. “I take it for granted, sir,” he adds, “you being one of the medical staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate subject?” Allan is quite sure of it. “Because, sir,” says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrow-fully, “we have had enough of that.” His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. “Still I am bound to tell you,” observes Allan after repeating his former assurance, “that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and that he may be—I do not say that he is—too far gone to recover.” “Do you consider him in present danger, sir?” inquires the trooper. “Yes, I fear so.” “Then, sir,” returns the trooper in a decisive manner, “it appears to me—being naturally in the vagabond way myself—that the sooner he comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!” Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command; and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle’s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby’s lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee. He shuffles slowly into Mr. George’s gallery and stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity. “Look here, Jo!” says Allan. “This is Mr. George.” Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a moment, and then down again. “He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room here.” Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot on which he rests, he mutters that he is “wery thankful.” “You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here, whatever you do, Jo.” “Wishermaydie if I don’t, sir,” says Jo, reverting to his favourite declaration. “I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir, ‘sept not knowin’ nothink and starwation.” “I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak to you.” “My intention merely was, sir,” observes Mr. George, amazingly broad and upright, “to point out to him where he can lie down and get a thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here.” As the trooper speaks, he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the little cabins. “There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon, sir”—he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him—“Mr. Wood-court pleases. Don’t you be alarmed if you hear shots; they’ll be aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there’s another thing I would recommend, sir,” says the trooper, turning to his visit-or. “Phil, come here!” Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. “Here is a man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor creature. You do, don’t you, Phil?” “Certainly and surely I do, guv’ner,” is Phil’s reply. “Now I was thinking, sir,” says Mr. George in a martial sort of confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a drum-head, “that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles—” “Mr. George, my considerate friend,” returns Allan, taking out his purse, “it is the very favour I would have asked.” Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing “which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years, would be too absurdly unfortunate!” Allan takes the opportunity of going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him. “I take it, sir,” says Mr. George, “that you know Miss Summerson pretty well?” Yes, it appears. “Not related to her, sir?” No, it appears. “Excuse the apparent curiosity,” says Mr. George. “It seemed to me probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest in him. ’Tis my case, sir, I as-sure you.” “And mine, Mr. George.” The trooper looks sideways at Allan’s sunburnt cheek and bright dark eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of him. “Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bucket took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted with the name, I can help you to it. It’s Tulkinghorn. That’s what it is.” Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name. “Tulkinghorn. That’s the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow.” Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is. “What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?” “I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, what kind of man?” “Why, then I’ll tell you, sir,” returns the trooper, stopping short and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face fires and flushes all over; “he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man—by George!—that has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That’s the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!” “I am sorry,” says Allan, “to have touched so sore a place.” “Sore?” The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. “It’s no fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me. He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won’t hold off, and he won’t come on. If I have a payment to make him, or time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don’t see me, don’t hear me—passes me on to Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn, Melchisedech’s in Clifford’s Inn passes me back again to him—he keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well, loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing. Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He chafes and goads me till— Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr. Woodcourt,” the trooper resumes his march, “all I say is, he is an old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that chance, in one of the humours he drives me into—he’d go down, sir!” Mr. George has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about the going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to. Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administration of medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without seeking rest, goes away to Mr. Jarndyce to communicate his discovery.
With him Mr. Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and showing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in substance what he said in the morning, without any material variation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a hollower sound. “Let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more,” falters Jo, “and be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep, as jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving on right forards with his duty, and I’ll be wery thankful. I’d be more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an unfortnet to be it.” He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr. Jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook’s Court, the rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down. To Cook’s Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Snagsby is be-hind his counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an in-denture of several skins which has just come in from the engrosser’s, an immense desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the traveller from despair. Mr Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for business. “You don’t remember me, Mr. Snagsby?” The stationer’s heart begins to thump heavily, for his old apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to answer, “No, sir, I can’t say I do. I should have considered—not to put too fine a point upon it—that I never saw you before, sir.” “Twice before,” says Allan Woodcourt. “Once at a poor bed-side, and once—” “It’s come at last!” thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection breaks upon him. “It’s got to a head now and is going to burst!” But he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the little counting-house and to shut the door. “Are you a married man, sir?” “No, I am not.” “Would you make the attempt, though single,” says Mr. Snagsby in a melancholy whisper, “to speak as low as you can?
For my little woman is a-listening somewheres, or I’ll forfeit the business and five hundred pound!” In deep dejection Mr. Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back against his desk, protesting, “I never had a secret of my own, sir. I can’t charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn’t have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn’t have done it, I dursn’t have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a burden to me.” His visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he remember Jo. Mr. Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don’t he! “You couldn’t name an individual human being—except myself—that my little woman is more set and determined against than Jo,” says Mr. Snagsby. Allan asks why. “Why?” repeats Mr. Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump of hair at the back of his bald head. “How should I know why? But you are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married person such a question!” With this beneficent wish, Mr. Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to communicate. “There again!” says Mr. Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the face. “At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me, in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself, and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that other certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private asylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam, sir!” says Mr. Snagsby. But it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen. And being tender-hearted and affected by the ac-count he hears of Jo’s condition, he readily engages to “look round” as early in the evening as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Snagsby is as quiet a manager as he. Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Snagsby, touched by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds. “And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?” inquires the stationer with his cough of sympathy. “I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am,” returns Jo, “and don’t want for nothink. I’m more cumfbler nor you can’t think. Mr. Sangsby! I’m wery sorry that I done it, but I didn’t go fur to do it, sir.” The stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what it is that he is sorry for having done. “Mr. Sangsby,” says Jo, “I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos and yit as warn’t the t’other lady, and none of ’em never says nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good and my having been s’unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me yesday, and she ses, ‘Ah, Jo!’ she ses. ‘We thought we’d lost you, Jo!’ she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don’t pass a word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don’t, and I turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him a-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he’s allus a-doin’ on day and night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby.” The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table. Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve his feelings. “Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby,” proceeds Jo, “wos, as you wos able to write wery large, p’raps?” “Yes, Jo, please God,” returns the stationer. “Uncommon precious large, p’raps?” says Jo with eagerness. “Yes, my poor boy.” Jo laughs with pleasure. “Wot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby, wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn’t he moved no furder, whether you might be so good p’raps as to write out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to do it, and that though I didn’t know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr. Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I hoped as he’d be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could be made to say it wery large, he might.” “It shall say it, Jo. Very large.” Jo laughs again. “Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. It’s wery kind of you, sir, and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore.” The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips down his fourth half-crown—he has never been so close to a case requiring so many—and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this little earth, shall meet no more. No more. For the cart so hard to draw is near its journey’s end and drags over stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps, shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it still upon its weary road. Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging elevation of his one eyebrow, “Hold up, my boy! Hold up!” There, too, is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast in the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and, from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in answer to his cheerful words. Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards him—just as he sat in the law-writer’s room—and touches his chest and heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little more. The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next used, there will be a speck of rust upon it. “Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don’t be frightened.” “I thought,” says Jo, who has started and is looking round, “I thought I was in Tom-all-Alone’s agin. Ain’t there nobody here but you, Mr. Woodcot?” “Nobody.” “And I ain’t took back to Tom-all-Alone’s. Am I, sir?” “No.” Jo closes his eyes, muttering, “I’m wery thankful.” After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, “Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?” “Never knowd nothink, sir.” “Not so much as one short prayer?” “No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr. Sangsby’s and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a- speakin to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn’t make out nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone’s a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t’other ‘wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t’others, and not a- talkin to us. We never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about.” It takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, under-stand him. After a short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong effort to get out of bed. “Stay, Jo! What now?” “It’s time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir,” he returns with a wild look. “Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?” “Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he wos. It’s time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground, sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be berried. He used fur to say to me, ‘I am as poor as you to- day, Jo,’ he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have come there to be laid along with him.” “By and by, Jo. By and by.”
“Ah! P’raps they wouldn’t do it if I wos to go myself. But will you promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?” “I will, indeed.” “Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They’ll have to get the key of the gate afore they can take me in, for it’s allus locked. And there’s a step there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It’s turned wery dark, sir. Is there any light a-comin?” “It is coming fast, Jo.” Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very near its end. “Jo, my poor fellow!” “I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I’m a-gropin—a-gropin—let me catch hold of your hand.” “Jo, can you say what I say?” “I’ll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it’s good.” “Our Father.” “Our Father! Yes, that’s wery good, sir.” “Which art in heaven.” “Art in heaven—is the light a-comin, sir?” “It is close at hand. Hallowed by thy name!” “Hallowed be—thy—” The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead! Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
Chapter 48
Chapter 48
Closing in The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the past doze in their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility, loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The fashion-able world—tremendous orb, nearly five miles round—is in full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed distances. Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled and taken, she is never absent. Though the be-lief she of old reposed in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance that what she is to those around her she will remain another day, it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown more handsome and more haughty. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as hereto-fore, he is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from the peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who might be supposed to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him.
One thing has been much on her mind since their late inter-view in his turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to throw it off. It is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of seed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a Parliamentary committee. My Lady sits in the room in which she gave audience to the young man of the name of Guppy. Rosa is with her and has been writing for her and reading to her. Rosa is now at work upon embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day. “Rosa.” The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised. “See to the door. Is it shut?” Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised. “I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust your attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I will not disguise myself to you at least. But I con-fide in you. Say nothing to any one of what passes between us.” The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be trustworthy. “Do you know,” Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her chair nearer, “do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from what I am to any one?” “Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you really are.” “You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!” She says it with a kind of scorn—though not of Rosa—and sits brooding, looking dreamily at her. “Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?”
“I don’t know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my heart, I wish it was so.” “It is so, little one.” The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an explanation. “And if I were to say to-day, ‘Go! Leave me!’ I should say what would give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very solitary.” “My Lady! Have I offended you?” “In nothing. Come here.” Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady’s feet. My Lady, with that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there. “I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot. There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All this I have done for your sake.” The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses her on the cheek and makes no other answer. “Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be be-loved and happy!” “Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought—forgive my being so free— that you are not happy.” “I!” “Will you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think again. Let me stay a little while!” “I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now— not what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!” She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state.
As indifferent as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its other departed monsters. Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her appearance. Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him first. “Sir Leicester, I am desirous—but you are engaged.” Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn. Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him for a moment. “I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?” With a look that plainly says, “You know you have the power to remain if you will,” she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a chair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little for-ward for her with his clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls upon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her life. It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that half-a- dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to con-descend to liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the up-start gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which bold boys aspire to throw their friends’ caps (its only present use), retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high and dry master in the House of Lords.
Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair, could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands. And yet—and yet—she sends a look in that direction as if it were her heart’s desire to have that figure moved out of the way. Sir Leicester begs his Lady’s pardon. She was about to say? “Only that Mr. Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment) and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am tired to death of the matter.” “What can I do—to—assist?” demands Sir Leicester in some considerable doubt. “Let us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to send him up?” “Mr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request,” says Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business term, “request the iron gentleman to walk this way.” Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously. “I hope you are well, Mr. Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicit-or, Mr. Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr. Rouncewell,” Sir Leicester skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, “was desirous to speak with you. Hem!” “I shall be very happy,” returns the iron gentleman, “to give my best attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say.” As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to en-courage openness. “Pray, sir,” says Lady Dedlock listlessly, “may I be allowed to inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son respecting your son’s fancy?” It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look upon him as she asks this question. “If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son to conquer that—fancy.” The ironmaster repeats her expression with a little emphasis. “And did you?” “Oh! Of course I did.” Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper. The iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do it. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the precious. Highly proper. “And pray has he done so?” “Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we some-times couple an intention with our—our fancies which renders them not altogether easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest.” Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Rouncewell is perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently adapts his tone to his reception. “Because,” proceeds my Lady, “I have been thinking of the subject, which is tiresome to me.” “I am very sorry, I am sure.” “And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite concur”—Sir Leicester flattered—“and if you cannot give us the assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion that the girl had better leave me.” “I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind.” “Then she had better go.” “Excuse me, my Lady,” Sir Leicester considerately inter-poses, “but perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has not merited. Here is a young woman,” says Sir Leicester, magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a service of plate, “whose good fortune it is to have attracted the notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very great—I believe unquestionably very great, sir—for a young woman in that station of life. The question then arises, should that young woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune simply because she has”—Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up his sentence—“has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell’s son? Now, has she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this our previous understanding?” “I beg your pardon,” interposes Mr. Rouncewell’s son’s father. “Sir Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray dismiss that from your consideration. If you re-member anything so unimportant—which is not to be expected—you would recollect that my first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining here.” Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Leicester is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their report of the iron gentleman’s observations. “It is not necessary,” observes my Lady in her coldest manner before he can do anything but breathe amazedly, “to enter into these matters on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever to say against her, but she is so far in-sensible to her many advantages and her good fortune that she is in love—or supposes she is, poor little fool—and unable to appreciate them.” Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman had better go. “As Sir Leicester observed, Mr. Rouncewell, on the last occasion when we were fatigued by this business,” Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds, “we cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would you prefer?” “Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly—” “By all means.” “—I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of the incumbrance and remove her from her present position.”
“And to speak as plainly,” she returns with the same studied carelessness, “so should I. Do I understand that you will take her with you?” The iron gentleman makes an iron bow. “Sir Leicester, will you ring?” Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from his window and pulls the bell. “I had forgotten you. Thank you.” He makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury, swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce, skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs. Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and re-mains with her near the door ready to depart. “You are taken charge of, you see,” says my Lady in her weary manner, “and are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for.” “She seems after all,” observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little forward with his hands behind him, “as if she were crying at going away.” “Why, she is not well-bred, you see,” returns Mr. Rouncewell with some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer to retort upon, “and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no doubt.” “No doubt,” is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s composed reply. Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that she thanks my Lady over and over again. “Out, you silly little puss!” says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily. “Have a spirit, if you’re fond of Watt!” My Lady merely waves her off with indifference, saying, “There, there, child! You are a good girl. Go away!” Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr. Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted with lamps, looms in my Lady’s view, bigger and blacker than before. “Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Rouncewell after a pause of a few moments, “I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome subject. I can very well understand, I as-sure you, how tiresome so small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of my dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly exert my influence to take my young friend here away without troubling you at all. But it appeared to me—I dare say magnifying the importance of the thing—that it was respectful to explain to you how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the polite world.” Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these remarks. “Mr. Rouncewell,” he returns, “do not mention it. Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side.” “I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may, by way of a last word, revert to what I said before of my mother’s long connexion with the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done something to awaken such feelings— though of course Lady Dedlock, by her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much more.” If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house. Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still standing in his window with his hands behind him and my Lady still sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night as well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing it as she rises to retire, thinks, “Well she may be! The power of this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole time.” But he can act a part too—his one unchanging character—and as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester’s pair, should find no flaw in him.
Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Leicester is whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner, still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated cousin’s text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone yet? No. What is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library. Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that. But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now. He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission, while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to dispense with such mockeries. “What do you want, sir?” “Why, Lady Dedlock,” says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up and down, up and down, “I am rather surprised by the course you have taken.” “Indeed?” “Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position, Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I don’t approve of it.” He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not escape this woman’s observation. “I do not quite understand you.” “Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock, we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl.” “Well, sir?” “And you know—and I know—that you have not sent her away for the reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as much as possible from—excuse my mentioning it as a matter of business—any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself.”
“Well, sir?” “Well, Lady Dedlock,” returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and nursing the uppermost knee. “I object to that. I consider that a dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don’t know what, in the house. Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!” “If, sir,” she begins, “in my knowledge of my secret—” But he interrupts her. “Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation.” “That is very true. If in my knowledge of the secret I do what I can to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it or could move me.” This she says with great deliberation and distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were any insensible instrument used in business. “Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock,” he returns, “you are not to be trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not to be trusted.” “Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?” “Yes,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the hearth. “Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One might have supposed that the course was straight on—over everything, neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under foot.” She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower lip is compressed under her teeth. “This woman understands me,” Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. “She cannot be spared. Why should she spare others?” For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner, but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it, shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. “This woman,” thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark object closing up her view, “is a study.” He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak, appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence. “Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring it void and taking my own course.” “I am quite prepared.” Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. “That is all I have to trouble you with, Lady Dedlock.” She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, “This is the notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you.” “Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed. But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely in a lawyer’s mind.” “You intend to give me no other notice?” “You are right. No.”
“Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?” “A home question!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. “No, not to- night.” “To-morrow?” “All things considered, I had better decline answering that question, Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don’t know when, exactly, you would not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow. I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you good evening.” She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open it. “Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were writing in the library. Are you going to return there?” “Only for my hat. I am going home.” She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not often are, for its accuracy. “And what do you say,” Mr. Tulkinghorn inquires, referring to it. “What do you say?” If it said now, “Don’t go home!” What a famous clock, here-after, if it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it, “Don’t go home!” With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters after seven and ticks on again. “Why, you are worse than I thought you,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. “Two minutes wrong? At this rate you won’t last my time.” What a watch to return good for evil if it ticked in answer, “Don’t go home!” He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries, difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to whisper, “Don’t go home!”
Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing meets him murmuring, “Don’t go home!” Arrived at last in his dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the Roman’s hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to give him the late warning, “Don’t come here!” It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them. Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless. The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden. Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman, loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his Lady’s hands at her request and is bid-den to go back. She will walk there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of some trees. A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr. Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too. A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger’s wilderness of London there is some rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating. What’s that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it? The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling—there is one dog howling like a demon—the church-clocks, as if they were startled too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to swell in-to a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night, the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace again. Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet, and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man out of his immovable composure? For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing—like any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt, in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long. Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly pointing, and no one minds him. But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street. What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber, and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily, carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, “If he could only tell what he saw!” He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These objects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but the clouds and flowers and pillars too—in short, the very body and soul of Allegory, and all the brains it has—stark mad. It happens surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at these things looks up at the Roman and that he is in-vested in all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.
So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him, with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn’s time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn’s time is over for evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.
Chapter 49
Chapter 49
Dutiful Friendship A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr. Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration of a birthday in the family. It is not Mr. Bagnet’s birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking about it—a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother having de-parted this life twenty years. Some men rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection into their mother’s name. Mr. Bagnet is one of like his trade the better for that. If I had kept clear of his old girl causes him usually to make the noun- substantive “goodness” of the feminine gender. It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich’s last birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism, accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two, “What is your name?” and “Who gave you that name?” but there failing in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number three the question “And how do you like that name?” which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity. It is the old girl’s birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet’s calendar. The auspicious event is always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury, in-variably goes forth himself very early in the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief (essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs. Bag-net to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs. Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr. Bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment amidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown and be served by himself and the young people. As he is not illustrious for his cookery, this may be sup-posed to be a matter of state rather than enjoyment on the old girl’s part, but she keeps her state with all imaginable cheerfulness. On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff, to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an honoured guest. Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving, as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes. “At half after one.” Says Mr. Bagnet. “To the minute. They’ll be done.”
Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a stand-still before the fire and beginning to burn. “You shall have a dinner, old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Fit for a queen.” Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet’s breast and with an admonitory poke recalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes her eyes in the in-tensity of her relief. “George will look us up,” says Mr. Bagnet. “At half after four. To the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This afternoon?” “Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I begin to think. Just about that, and no less,” re-turns Mrs. Bagnet, laughing and shaking her head. “Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “never mind. You’d be as young as ever you was. If you wasn’t younger. Which you are. As everybody knows.” Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it will be. “Do you know, Lignum,” says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the table-cloth, and winking “salt!” at Malta with her right eye, and shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, “I begin to think George is in the roving way again. “George,” returns Mr. Bagnet, “will never desert. And leave his old comrade. In the lurch. Don’t be afraid of it.” “No, Lignum. No. I don’t say he will. I don’t think he will. But if he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be off.” Mr. Bagnet asks why. “Well,” returns his wife, considering, “George seems to me to be getting not a little impatient and restless. I don’t say but what he’s as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn’t be George, but he smarts and seems put out.”
“He’s extra-drilled,” says Mr. Bagnet. “By a lawyer. Who would put the devil out.” “There’s something in that,” his wife assents; “but so it is, Lignum.” Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion. With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction, as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too, are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest’s place at his right hand. It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year, for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess is developed in these specimens in the singular form of guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old girl would not cause him a moment’s disappointment on any day, least of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to understand. The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the present. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the young ladies them-selves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs. Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco, and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this delightful entertainment. When Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet announces, “George! Military time.” It is George, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl (whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for Mr. Bagnet. “Happy returns to all!” says Mr. George. “But, George, old man!” cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously. “What’s come to you?” “Come to me?” “Ah! You are so white, George—for you—and look so shocked. Now don’t he, Lignum?” “George,” says Mr. Bagnet, “tell the old girl. What’s the matter.” “I didn’t know I looked white,” says the trooper, passing his hand over his brow, “and I didn’t know I looked shocked, and I’m sorry I do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over.” “Poor creetur!” says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother’s pity. “Is he gone? Dear, dear!” “I didn’t mean to say anything about it, for it’s not birthday talk, but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should have roused up in a minute,” says the trooper, making himself speak more gaily, “but you’re so quick, Mrs. Bagnet.” “You’re right. The old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Is as quick. As powder.”
“And what’s more, she’s the subject of the day, and we’ll stick to her,” cries Mr. George. “See here, I have brought a little brooch along with me. It’s a poor thing, you know, but it’s a keepsake. That’s all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet.” Mr. George produces his present, which is greeted with ad-miring leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of reverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. “Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Tell him my opinion of it.” “Why, it’s a wonder, George!” Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. “It’s the beautifullest thing that ever was seen!” “Good!” says Mr. Bagnet. “My opinion.” “It’s so pretty, George,” cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides and holding it out at arm’s length, “that it seems too choice for me.” “Bad!” says Mr. Bagnet. “Not my opinion.” “But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow,” says Mrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched out to him; “and though I have been a cross-grained soldier’s wife to you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for good luck, if you will, George.” The children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young Woolwich’s head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden, yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her airy way and saying, “Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap you are!” But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. “Would any one believe this?” says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. “I am so out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!” Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be got into action. “If that don’t bring you round, George,” says she, “just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and the two together must do it.” “You ought to do it of yourself,” George answers; “I know that very well, Mrs. Bagnet. I’ll tell you how, one way and an-other, the blues have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. ’Twas dull work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him.” “What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your roof.” “I helped him so far, but that’s little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped out of that.” “Ah, poor creetur!” says Mrs. Bagnet. “Then,” says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his heavy hand over his hair, “that brought up Gridley in a man’s mind. His was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up in a man’s mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly—it made flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you.” “My advice to you,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, “is to light your pipe and tingle that way. It’s wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the health altogether.” “You’re right,” says the trooper, “and I’ll do it.” So he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony of drinking Mrs. Bagnet’s health, always given by himself on these occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling “the mixtur,” and George’s pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the assembled company in the following terms. “George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day’s march. And you won’t find such another. Here’s towards her!” The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model composition is limited to the three words “And wishing yours!” which the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, “Here’s a man!”
Here is a man, much to the astonishment of the little company, looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man—a quick keen man—and he takes in everybody’s look at him, all at once, individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a remarkable man. “George,” says the man, nodding, “how do you find yourself?” “Why, it’s Bucket!” cries Mr. George. “Yes,” says the man, coming in and closing the door. “I was going down the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the musical instruments in the shop-window—a friend of mine is in want of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone—and I saw a party enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I thought I couldn’t be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George, at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma’am? And with you, governor? And Lord,” says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, “here’s children too! You may do anything with me if you only show me children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who your father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!” Mr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. George and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. “You pretty dears,” says Mr. Bucket, “give us another kiss; it’s the only thing I’m greedy in. Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of these two, ma’am? I should put ’em down at the figures of about eight and ten.” “You’re very near, sir,” says Mrs. Bagnet. “I generally am near,” returns Mr. Bucket, “being so fond of children. A friend of mine has had nineteen of ’em, ma’am, all by one mother, and she’s still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do you call these, my darling?” pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta’s cheeks. “These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do you think about father? Do you think father could recommend a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket’s friend, my dear? My name’s Bucket. Ain’t that a funny name?” These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr. Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him that as a friend of George’s she is particularly glad to see him this evening, for George has not been in his usual spirits. “Not in his usual spirits?” exclaims Mr. Bucket. “Why, I never heard of such a thing! What’s the matter, George? You don’t in-tend to tell me you’ve been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for? You haven’t got anything on your mind, you know.” “Nothing particular,” returns the trooper. “I should think not,” rejoins Mr. Bucket. “What could you have on your mind, you know! And have these pets got any-thing on their minds, eh? Not they, but they’ll be upon the minds of some of the young fellows, some of these days, and make ’em precious low- spirited. I ain’t much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma’am.” Mrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own. “There, ma’am!” says Mr. Bucket. “Would you believe it? No, I haven’t. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as fond of children as myself and as wishful to have ’em, but no. So it is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine. What a very nice backyard, ma’am! Any way out of that yard, now?” There is no way out of that yard. “Ain’t there really?” says Mr. Bucket. “I should have thought there might have been. Well, I don’t know as I ever saw a back-yard that took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No, I see there’s no way out. But what a very good- proportioned yard it is!” Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his chair next his friend Mr. George and pats Mr. George affectionately on the shoulder. “How are your spirits now, George?” “All right now,” returns the trooper. “That’s your sort!” says Mr. Bucket. “Why should you ever have been otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to be out of spirits. That ain’t a chest to be out of spirits, is it, ma’am? And you haven’t got anything on your mind, you know, George; what could you have on your mind!”
Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety of his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly his own. But the sun of his sociality soon re-covers from this brief eclipse and shines again. “And this is brother, is it, my dears?” says Mr. Bucket, refer-ring to Quebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich. “And a nice brother he is—half-brother I mean to say. For he’s too old to be your boy, ma’am.” “I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else’s,” re-turns Mrs. Bagnet, laughing. “Well, you do surprise me! Yet he’s like you, there’s no denying. Lord, he’s wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the brow, you know, there his father comes out!” Mr. Bucket compares the faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid satisfaction. This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is George’s godson. “George’s godson, is he?” rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality. “I must shake hands over again with George’s god-son. Godfather and godson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of him, ma’am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?” Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, “Plays the fife. Beautiful.” “Would you believe it, governor,” says Mr. Bucket, struck by the coincidence, “that when I was a boy I played the fife my-self? Not in a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you! ‘British Grenadiers’—there’s a tune to warm an Englishman up! Could you give us ‘British Grenadiers,’ my fine fellow?” Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much enlivened, beats time and never falls to come in sharp with the burden, “British Gra-a-anadeers!” In short, he shows so much musical taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them “Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.” This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar—Mr. Bucket’s own words are “to come up to the scratch.” This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr. Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old girl’s next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and consolidate the es-teem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs. Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day in a large black pocket- book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope that Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner, sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that sphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the confines of domestic bliss. It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn, should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits to walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and observes even them attentively as Mr. George sits smoking cross-legged in the chimney-corner. At length Mr. George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket, with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken for an absent friend.
“Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor—could you recommend me such a thing?” “Scores,” says Mr. Bagnet. “I am obliged to you,” returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand. “You’re a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn’t,” says Mr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, “you needn’t commit yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don’t want to pay too large a price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man must live, and ought to it.” Mr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they have found a jewel of price. “Suppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten to-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few wiolincellers of a good tone?” says Mr. Bucket. Nothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability of having a small stock collected there for approval. “Thank you,” says Mr. Bucket, “thank you. Good night, ma’am. Good night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life.” They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions of goodwill on both sides. “Now George, old boy,” says Mr. Bucket, taking his arm at the shop-door, “come along!” As they go down the little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them, Mrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket “almost clings to George like, and seems to be really fond of him.” The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. George therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, “Wait half a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first.” Immediately afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour, where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door. “Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, “duty is duty, and friend-ship is friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you whether I have done it or not. You must consider your-self in custody, George.” “Custody? What for?” returns the trooper, thunderstruck. “Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case upon him with his fat forefinger, “duty, as you know very well, is one thing, and conversation is another. It’s my duty to inform you that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” “Murder!” “Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an impressive state of action, “bear in mind what I’ve said to you. I ask you nothing. You’ve been in low spirits this afternoon. I say, you don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” “No. Where has there been a murder?” “Now, George,” says Mr. Bucket, “don’t you go and commit yourself. I’m a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was shot last night. I want you for that.” The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face. “Bucket! It’s not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and that you suspect me?” “George,” returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, “it is certainly possible, because it’s the case. This deed was done last night at ten o’clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten o’clock, and you’ll be able to prove it, no doubt.” “Last night! Last night?” repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it flashes upon him. “Why, great heaven, I was there last night!” “So I have understood, George,” returns Mr. Bucket with great deliberation. “So I have understood. Likewise you’ve been very often there. You’ve been seen hanging about the place, and you’ve been heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it’s possible —I don’t say it’s certainly so, mind you, but it’s possible—that he may have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow.” The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak. “Now, George,” continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise, “my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant. I tell you plainly there’s a reward out, of a hundred guineas, offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always been pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as any other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear to you that I must have you, and that I’m damned if I don’t have you. Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?” Mr. George has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier. “Come,” he says; “I am ready.” “George,” continues Mr. Bucket, “wait a bit!” With his upholsterer manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. “This is a serious charge, George, and such is my duty.” The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his two hands, clasped together, and says, “There! Put them on!” Mr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. “How do you find them? Are they comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as is consistent with my duty, and I’ve got another pair in my pocket.” This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his customer. “They’ll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see, George”—he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about the trooper’s neck—“I was mindful of your feelings when I come out, and brought this on purpose. There! Who’s the wiser?” “Only I,” returns the trooper, “but as I know it, do me one more good turn and pull my hat over my eyes.” “Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain’t it a pity? It looks so.”
“I can’t look chance men in the face with these things on,” Mr. George hurriedly replies. “Do, for God’s sake, pull my hat forward.” So strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.
Chapter 50
Chapter 50
Esther's Narrative It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Caddy Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), in-forming me that her health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in which he seconded her en-treaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby—such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy’s inky days, and altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous little sight. But it was enough for Caddy that she was used to it. The projects with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther’s education, and little Esther’s marriage, and even for her own old age as the grandmother of little Esther’s little Esthers, was so prettily expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I am getting on irregularly as it is. To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which had been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost—I think I must say quite—believed that I did her good whenever I was near her. Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl’s that I am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my guardian’s consent, post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me that there never was anything like it. Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters before leaving home. But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my return at night, “Now, little woman, little woman, this will never do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and take possession of our old lodgings.” “Not for me, dear guardian,” said I, “for I never feel tired,” which was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request. “For me then,” returned my guardian, “or for Ada, or for both of us. It is somebody’s birthday to-morrow, I think.” “Truly I think it is,” said I, kissing my darling, who would be twenty-one to-morrow. “Well,” observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously, “that’s a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will go. That being settled, there is another thing—how have you left Caddy?” “Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she regains her health and strength.” “What do you call some time, now?” asked my guardian thoughtfully. “Some weeks, I am afraid.” “Ah!” He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much. “Now, what do you say about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?”
I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his opinion to be confirmed by some one. “Well, you know,” returned my guardian quickly, “there’s Woodcourt.” I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me. “You don’t object to him, little woman?” “Object to him, guardian? Oh no!” “And you don’t think the patient would object to him?” So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind attendance on Miss Flite. “Very good,” said my guardian. “He has been here to-day, my dear, and I will see him about it to-morrow.” I felt in this short conversation—though I did not know how, for she was quiet, and we interchanged no look—that my dear girl well remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no other hands than Caddy’s had brought me the little parting token. This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master’s love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before my-self, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life that was in store for for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before. I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that it was gone I felt as if I under-stood its nature better. Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling’s birthday, and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us that Richard’s absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that day I was for some weeks—eight or nine as I remember—very much with Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own illness. She often came to Caddy’s, but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Caddy’s rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her. With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self- denying, so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I had never known the best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball- room, and where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon. At Caddy’s request I took the supreme direction of her apartment, trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It was at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Caddy about Bleak House. We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who in his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very little child. Whatever Caddy’s condition really was, she never failed to declare to Prince that she was all but well—which I, heaven forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince in such good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all.
Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as untidy, she would say, “Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do to-day?” And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number of letters she had lately received and answered or of the coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do with a serene con-tempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be disguised. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stir-ring in the night, it was surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy required any little comfort that the house contained, she first carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day, all but blessing it—showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high- shouldered presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy’s life. “My Caroline,” he would say, making the nearest approach that he could to bending over her. “Tell me that you are better to-day.” “Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop,” Caddy would reply. “Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite prostrated by fatigue?” Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be particular in his attentions since I had been so altered. “Not at all,” I would assure him. “Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My dear Caroline”—he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite generosity and protection—“want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish and gratify it, my daughter.
Everything this house contains, everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not,” he would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, “even allow my simple requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine.” He had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment (his son’s inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these affectionate self-sacrifices. “Nay, my dears,” he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy’s thin arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though not by the same process. “Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park.” He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully re-cord, except that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and her husband, from top to toe. Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used to come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was, and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another. I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors be-cause he was now Caddy’s regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often slipped home at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met, notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still was sorry for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his professional engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects for the future. It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change in my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me, because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing in themselves and only became something when they were pieced together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that; but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to me, and in which I traced some hidden regret. Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my head that she was a little grieved—for me—by what I had told her about Bleak House. How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don’t know. I had no idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still, that Ada might be thinking—for me, though I had abandoned all such thoughts—of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy to believe that I believed it. What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as Caddy’s illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home duties—though I had always been there in the morning to make my guardian’s breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said there must be two little women, for his little woman was never missing—I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and night. And still there was the same shade between me and my darling. “So, Dame Trot,” observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night when we were all three together, “so Woodcourt has restored Caddy Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?” “Yes,” I said; “and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be made rich, guardian.” “I wish it was,” he returned, “with all my heart.” So did I too, for that matter. I said so. “Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we not, little woman?” I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and many others. “True,” said my guardian. “I had forgotten that. But we would agree to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and his own household gods—and household goddess, too, perhaps?” That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that. “To be sure,” said my guardian. “All of us. I have a great regard for Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such a man away.” “It might open a new world to him,” said I. “So it might, little woman,” my guardian assented. “I doubt if he expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?” I shook my head.
“Humph,” said my guardian. “I am mistaken, I dare say.” As there was a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl’s satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked which was a favourite with my guardian. “And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?” I asked him when I had hummed it quietly all through. “I don’t quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country.” “I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him wherever he goes,” said I; “and though they are not riches, he will never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least.” “Never, little woman,” he replied. I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian’s chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself. So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder—how little thinking what was heavy on her mind!—and I said she was not quite well, and put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I never thought she stood in need of it. “Oh, my dear good Esther,” said Ada, “if I could only make up my mind to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!” “Why, my love!” I remonstrated. “Ada, why should you not speak to us!” Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart. “You surely don’t forget, my beauty,” said I, smiling, “what quiet, old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the discreetest of dames? You don’t forget how happily and peacefully my life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you don’t forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be.” “No, never, Esther.” “Why then, my dear,” said I, “there can be nothing amiss—and why should you not speak to us?” “Nothing amiss, Esther?” returned Ada. “Oh, when I think of all these years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!” I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many little recollections of our life together and pre-vented her from saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned to my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat near her for a little while. She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked different to me. My guardian’s old hopes of her and Richard arose sorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, “She has been anxious about him,” and I wondered how that love would end. When I had come home from Caddy’s while she was ill, I had often found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her, which was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still rather wondered what the work could he, for it was evidently nothing for herself. And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under her pillow so that it was hidden. How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much less amiable than I thought myself, to be so pre-occupied with my own cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace! But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my darling.
Chapter 51
Chapter 51
Enlightened When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to Mr. Vholes’s in Symond’s Inn. For he never once, from the moment when I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit. He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his address. “Just so, sir,” said Mr. Vholes. “Mr. C.’s address is not a hundred miles from here, sir, Mr. C.’s address is not a hundred miles from here. Would you take a seat, sir?” Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him beyond what he had mentioned. “Just so, sir. I believe, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, still quietly insisting on the seat by not giving the address, “that you have influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have.” “I was not aware of it myself,” returned Mr. Woodcourt; “but I suppose you know best.” “Sir,” rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all, “it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir.” Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address. “Give me leave, sir,” said Mr. Vholes. “Bear with me for a moment. Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play without—need I say what?”
“Money, I presume?” “Sir,” said Mr. Vholes, “to be honest with you (honesty being my golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr. C.’s game I express to you no opinion, no opinion. It might be highly impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off; it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner, “nothing.” “You seem to forget,” returned Mr. Woodcourt, “that I ask you to say nothing and have no interest in anything you say.” “Pardon me, sir!” retorted Mr. Vholes. “You do yourself an injustice. No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not—shall not in my office, if I know it—do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend.” “Well,” replied Mr. Woodcourt, “that may be. I am particularly interested in his address.” “The number, sir,” said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, “I believe I have already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C. is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate, not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly if you please) to wrong no one.” Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it. “I wish, sir,” said Mr. Vholes, “to leave a good name behind me. Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is painted on the door outside, with that object.” “And Mr. Carstone’s address, Mr. Vholes?” “Sir,” returned Mr. Vholes, “as I believe I have already mentioned, it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.’s apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I am far from objecting, for I court inquiry.” Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now but too well. He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was aroused from his dream. “Woodcourt, my dear fellow,” cried Richard, starting up with extended hands, “you come upon my vision like a ghost.” “A friendly one,” he replied, “and only waiting, as they say ghosts do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?” They were seated now, near together. “Badly enough, and slowly enough,” said Richard, “speaking at least for my part of it.” “What part is that?” “The Chancery part.” “I never heard,” returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, “of its going well yet.” “Nor I,” said Richard moodily. “Who ever did?” He brightened again in a moment and said with his natural openness, “Woodcourt, I should be sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not, though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid I have wanted an object; but I have an object now—or it has me—and it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of me.” “A bargain,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “Do as much by me in return.” “Oh! You,” returned Richard, “you can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different creatures.” He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary condition. “Well, well!” he cried, shaking it off. “Everything has an end. We shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?” “Aye! Indeed I will.” They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of hearts. “You come as a godsend,” said Richard, “for I have seen nobody here yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You can hardly make the best of me if I don’t. You know, I dare say, that I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?” Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. “Now pray,” returned Richard, “don’t think me a heap of selfishness. Don’t suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone. Ada’s are bound up with mine; they can’t be separated; Vholes works for both of us. Do think of that!” He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice. “You see,” said Richard, with something pathetic in his man- ner of lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and un- studied, “to an upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!” Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard’s anxiety on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to Symond’s Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had had before that my dear girl’s little property would be absorbed by Mr. Vholes and that Richard’s justification to himself would be sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling. I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so radiantly willing as I had expected. “My dear,” said I, “you have not had any difference with Richard since I have been so much away?” “No, Esther.” “Not heard of him, perhaps?” said I. “Yes, I have heard of him,” said Ada. Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make my darling out. Should I go to Richard’s by myself? I said. No, Ada thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not under-stand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her face! We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen before. We had first to find out Symond’s Inn. We were going to in-quire in a shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. “We are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction,” said I. So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it written up. Symond’s Inn. We had next to find out the number. “Or Mr. Vholes’s office will do,” I recollected, “for Mr. Vholes’s office is next door.” Upon which Ada said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes’s office in the corner there. And it really was. Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to Richard’s name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel. I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. “If you had come a little earlier,” he said, “you would have found Woodcourt here. There never was such a good fellow as Wood-court is. He finds time to look in between-whiles, when any-body else with half his work to do would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so—everything that I am not, that the place bright-ens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again.” “God bless him,” I thought, “for his truth to me!” “He is not so sanguine, Ada,” continued Richard, casting his dejected look over the bundles of papers, “as Vholes and I are usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into them, and he has not. He can’t be expected to know much of such a labyrinth.” As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all bitten away. “Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?” said I. “Why, my dear Minerva,” answered Richard with his old gay laugh, “it is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in an open spot. But it’s well enough for the time. It’s near the offices and near Vholes.” “Perhaps,” I hinted, “a change from both—” “Might do me good?” said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the sentence. “I shouldn’t wonder! But it can only come in one way now—in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!” These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to him. Her face being turned away from me and to-wards him, I could not see it. “We are doing very well,” pursued Richard. “Vholes will tell you so. We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest. Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!” His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his features to the hour of his death. “The sight of our dear little woman,” said Richard, Ada still remaining silent and quiet, “is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days—” Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head. “—So exactly like the face of old days,” said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, “that I can’t make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; that’s the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I—don’t quite despair, but nearly. I get,” said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, “so tired!” He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. “I get,” he repeated gloomily, “so tired. It is such weary, weary work!” He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. Oh, what a loving and de-voted face I saw! “Esther, dear,” she said very quietly, “I am not going home again.” A light shone in upon me all at once. “Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I shall never go home any more!” With those words my darling drew his head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me. “Speak to Esther, my dearest,” said Richard, breaking the silence presently. “Tell her how it was.” I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to hear nothing. “My pet,” said I. “My love. My poor, poor girl!” I pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that I had upon me was to pity her so much. “Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?” “My dear,” said I, “to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great wrong. And as to me!” Why, as to me, what had I to forgive! I dried my sobbing darling’s eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and Richard sat on my other side; and while I was re-minded of that so different night when they had first taken me into their confidence and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it was.
“All I had was Richard’s,” Ada said; “and Richard would not take it, Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!” “And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame Durden,” said Richard, “that how could we speak to you at such a time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one morning and were married.” “And when it was done, Esther,” said my darling, “I was al-ways thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and some-times I thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted very much.” How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this be-fore! I don’t know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much, and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not there to darken their way; I did not do that. When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again, and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out of heart. Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself, “Now Esther, if you do, I’ll never speak to you again!”
“Why, I declare,” said I, “I never saw such a wife. I don’t think she loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness’ sake.” But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over her I don’t know how long. “I give this dear young couple notice,” said I, “that I am only going away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming backwards and forwards until Symond’s Inn is tired of the sight of me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!” I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my heart to turn from. So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away. And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying. I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I cried a little again, though on the whole I don’t think I behaved so very, very ill. It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only to look up at her windows.
It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me, and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place. It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit. And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, but all the better for that hovering about my darling. My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but he caught the light upon my face as I took mine. “Little woman,” said he, “You have been crying.” “Why, yes, guardian,” said I, “I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian.” I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him. “Is she married, my dear?” I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to his forgiveness.
“She has no need of it,” said he. “Heaven bless her and her husband!” But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. “Poor girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!” Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, “Well, well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast.” “But its mistress remains, guardian.” Though I was timid about saying it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken. “She will do all she can to make it happy,” said I. “She will succeed, my love!” The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old way, and said again, “She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak House is thinning fast, O little woman!” I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had meant to be since the letter and the answer.
Chapter 52
Chapter 52
Obstinacy But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the murderer’s apprehension, I did not in my first consternation understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the murdered person was Sir Leicester’s lawyer, and immediately my mother’s dread of him rushed into my remembrance. This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had some-times even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out of life! Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in his behalf that I was quite set up again.
“Guardian, you don’t think it possible that he is justly accused?” “My dear, I can’t think so. This man whom we have seen so open- hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a crime? I can’t believe it. It’s not that I don’t or I won’t. I can’t!” “And I can’t,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “Still, whatever we believe or know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all reasons for suspicion falling upon him.” “True,” said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, “It would be doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth in any of these respects.” I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce us to desert him in his need. “Heaven forbid!” returned my guardian. “We will stand by him, as he himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone.” He meant Mr. Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter. Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper’s man had been with him before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a distracted creature. That one of the trooper’s first anxieties was that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn assurance be could send us. That Mr. Wood-court had only quieted the man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to see the prisoner himself.
My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once run wild, might run wilder. In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went. It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had—as I have read—for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, like a cellar up-stairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn. When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread, and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced, putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment. “This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentle-men,” said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath. “And now I don’t so much care how it ends.” He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard. “This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,” said Mr. George, “but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of it.” As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction. “I thank you, miss,” said he. “Now, George,” observed my guardian, “as we require no new assurances on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours.”
“Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not innocent of this crime, I couldn’t look at you and keep my secret to myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply.” He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great amount of natural emotion by these simple means. “First,” said my guardian, “can we do anything for your personal comfort, George?” “For which, sir?” he inquired, clearing his throat. “For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would lessen the hardship of this confinement?” “Well, sir,” replied George, after a little cogitation, “I am equally obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can’t say that there is.” “You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever you do, George, let us know.” “Thank you, sir. Howsoever,” observed Mr. George with one of his sunburnt smiles, “a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes.” “Next, as to your case,” observed my guardian. “Exactly so, sir,” returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity. “How does it stand now?” “Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made more complete I don’t myself see, but I dare say Buck-et will manage it somehow.” “Why, heaven save us, man,” exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his old oddity and vehemence, “you talk of yourself as if you were somebody else!” “No offence, sir,” said Mr. George. “I am very sensible of your kindness. But I don’t see how an innocent man is to make up his mind to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls unless he takes it in that point of view.
“That is true enough to a certain extent,” returned my guardian, softened. “But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take ordinary precautions to defend himself.” “Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the magistrates, ‘Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is perfectly true; I know no more about it.’ I intend to continue stating that, sir. What more can I do? It’s the truth.” “But the mere truth won’t do,” rejoined my guardian. “Won’t it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!” Mr. George good-humouredly observed. “You must have a lawyer,” pursued my guardian. “We must engage a good one for you.” “I ask your pardon, sir,” said Mr. George with a step back-ward. “I am equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything of that sort.” “You won’t have a lawyer?” “No, sir.” Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. “I thank you all the same, sir, but—no lawyer!” “Why not?” “I don’t take kindly to the breed,” said Mr. George. “Gridley didn’t. And—if you’ll excuse my saying so much—I should hardly have thought you did yourself, sir.” “That’s equity,” my guardian explained, a little at a loss; “that’s equity, George.” “Is it, indeed, sir?” returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. “I am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general way I object to the breed.” Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our representations that his place of confinement was. “Pray think, once more, Mr. George,” said I. “Have you no wish in reference to your case?” “I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss,” he returned, “by court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware. If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a couple of minutes, miss, not more, I’ll endeavour to explain myself as clearly as I can.” He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and after a moment’s reflection went on. “You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property as I have—’tis small—is turned this way and that till it don’t know itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don’t particular complain of that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn’t gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn’t have happened. It has happened. Then comes the question how to meet it” He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look and said apologetically, “I am such a short-winded talker that I must think a bit.” Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed. “How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don’t wish to rake up his ashes, but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight hold of me. I don’t like his trade the better for that. If I had kept clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that’s not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer.” He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what purpose opened, I will mention presently. “I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often read in the newspapers), ‘My client says nothing, my client reserves his defence’: my client this, that, and t’other. Well, ’tis not the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was— shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way—if you’ll excuse my mentioning any-thing so disagreeable to a lady?” 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 us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a curtsy. “Real good friends of mine, they are,” sald 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,” said he. “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 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, in-creased, 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 be-fore her. Discipline must be maintained.”
Chapter 53
Chapter 53
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—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 to-morrow 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 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. A great crowd assembles in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the day of the funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in per-son; strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of in-consolable carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald’s College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of woe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified this day. Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through the lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd—as for what not?—and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage, now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the people’s heads, nothing escapes him. “And there you are, my partner, eh?” says Mr. Bucket to him-self, apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of the deceased’s house. “And so you are. And so you are! And very well indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!” The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of its assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice a hair’s breadth open while he looks. And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is still occupied with Mrs. B. “There you are, my partner, eh?” he murmuringly repeats. “And our lodger with you. I’m taking notice of you, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you’re all right in your health, my dear!” Not another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought down— Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did they fly with him on that sudden journey?—and until the procession moves, and Mr. Bucket’s view is changed. After which he composes himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful. Contrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage and Mr. Bucket shut up in his. Between the immeasurable track of space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state expressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both; neither is troubled about that. Mr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock’s, which is at present a sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious greatness. No knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused him-self to be provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, “Here’s another letter for you, Mr. Bucket, come by post,” and gives it him. “Another one, eh?” says Mr. Bucket.
If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity as to Mr. Bucket’s letters, that wary person is not the man to gratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same. “Do you happen to carry a box?” says Mr. Bucket. Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker. “Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?” says Mr. Bucket. “Thankee. It don’t matter what it is; I’m not particular as to the kind. Thankee!” Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the other, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right sort and goes on, letter in hand. Now although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business. Further, he often sees dam-aging letters produced in evidence and has occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the last twenty-four hours. “And this,” says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, “is in the same hand, and consists of the same two words.” What two words? He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly written in each, “Lady Dedlock.” “Yes, yes,” says Mr. Bucket. “But I could have made the money without this anonymous information.” Having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again, he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint, that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry better than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his refreshment when an idea enters his mind. Mr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is sinking low. Mr. Bucket’s eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they arrive. Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr. Bucket draws near and examines the directions. “No,” he says, “there’s none in that hand. It’s only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to-morrow.” With that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the funeral) and Volumnia are in attendance. Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom it airily says, “You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I know you.” Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr. Bucket rubs his hands. “Have you anything new to communicate, officer?” inquires Sir Leicester. “Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?” “Why—not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” “Because my time,” pursues Sir Leicester, “is wholly at your disposal with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law.” Mr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as though he would respectfully observe, “I do as-sure you, you’re a pretty creetur. I’ve seen hundreds worse looking at your time of life, I have indeed.” The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace.
Mr. Bucket prices that decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia is writing poetry. “If I have not,” pursues Sir Leicester, “in the most emphatic manner, adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious case, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of rectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall hesitate for a moment to bear.” Mr. Bucket made Sir Leicester’s bow again as a response to this liberality. “My mind,” Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, “has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent.” Sir Leicester’s voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head. Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused. “I declare,” he says, “I solemnly declare that until this crime is discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first marked because of his association with my house—which may have suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have indicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the assertion of my respect for that gentleman’s memory and of my fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me.” While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness, looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr. Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion. “The ceremony of to-day,” continues Sir Leicester, “strikingly illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend”—he lays a stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions—“was held by the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my brother who had committed it, I would not spare him.” Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the de-ceased that he was the trustiest and dearest person! “You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss,” replies Mr. Bucket soothingly, “no doubt. He was calculated to be a deprivation, I’m sure he was.” Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not the least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of her melancholy condition. “It gives a start to a delicate female,” says Mr. Bucket sympathetically, “but it’ll wear off.” Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law? And a great deal more to the like artless purpose. “Why you see, miss,” returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into persuasive action—and such is his natural gallantry that he had almost said “my dear”—“it ain’t easy to answer those questions at the present moment. Not at the present moment. I’ve kept myself on this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” whom Mr. Bucket takes into the conversation in right of his importance, “morning, noon, and night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don’t think I could have had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I could answer your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been traced. And I hope that he may find it”—Mr. Bucket again looks grave—“to his satisfaction.”
The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler’ll be executed—zample. Thinks more interest’s wanted—get man hanged presentime—than get man place ten thousand a year. Hasn’t a doubt—zample—far better hang wrong fler than no fler. “You know life, you know, sir,” says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, “and you can confirm what I’ve mentioned to this lady. You don’t want to be told that from information I have received I have gone to work. You’re up to what a lady can’t be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated station of society, miss,” says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at another narrow escape from “my dear.” “The officer, Volumnia,” observes Sir Leicester, “is faithful to his duty, and perfectly right.” Mr. Bucket murmurs, “Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” “In fact, Volumnia,” proceeds Sir Leicester, “it is not holding up a good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he acts upon his responsibility. And it does not be-come us, who assist in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them into execution. Or,” says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, “or who vindicate their outraged majesty.” Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for the darling man whose loss they all deplore. “Very well, Volumnia,” returns Sir Leicester. “Then you can-not be too discreet.” Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case—a beautiful case—and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to supply in a few hours.”
“I am very glad indeed to hear it,” says Sir Leicester. “Highly creditable to you.” “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket very seriously, “I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see, miss,” Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, “I mean from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite.” Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so. “Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families,” says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside. “I have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and you have no idea—come, I’ll go so far as to say not even you have any idea, sir,” this to the debilitated cousin, “what games goes on!” The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a prostration of boredom yawns, “Vayli,” being the used-up for “very likely.” Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here majestically interposes with the words, “Very good. Thank you!” and also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall in-to low habits they must take the consequences. “You will not forget, officer,” he adds with condescension, “that I am at your disposal when you please.” Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would suit, in case he should be as for’ard as he expects to be. Sir Leicester replies, “All times are alike to me.” Mr. Bucket makes his three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him. “Might I ask, by the by,” he says in a low voice, cautiously re- turning, “who posted the reward-bill on the staircase.” “I ordered it to be put up there,” replies Sir Leicester. “Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if I was to ask you why?” “Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject see any objection—” Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not be taken down. Repeating his three bows he with-draws, closing the door on Volumnia’s little scream, which is a preliminary to her remarking that that charmingly horrible per-son is a perfect Blue Chamber. In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr. Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire—bright and warm on the early winter night—admiring Mercury. “Why, you’re six foot two, I suppose?” says Mr. Bucket. “Three,” says Mercury. “Are you so much? But then, you see, you’re broad in proportion and don’t look it. You’re not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain’t. Was you ever modelled now?” Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head. Mercury never was modelled. “Then you ought to be, you know,” says Mr. Bucket; “and a friend of mine that you’ll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for the marble. My Lady’s out, ain’t she?” “Out to dinner.” “Goes out pretty well every day, don’t she?” “Yes.” “Not to be wondered at!” says Mr. Bucket. “Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the same way of life as yourself?” Answer in the negative. “Mine was,” says Mr. Bucket. “My father was first a page, then a footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career, and so it was. I’ve a brother in service, and a brother- in-law. My Lady a good temper?” Mercury replies, “As good as you can expect.”
“Ah!” says Mr. Bucket. “A little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! What can you anticipate when they’re so handsome as that? And we like ’em all the better for it, don’t we?” Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a man of gallantry and can’t deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a violent ringing at the bell. “Talk of the angels,” says Mr. Bucket. “Here she is!” The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager eye and rattles something in his pocket—halfpence perhaps. Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the other Mercury who has brought her home. “Mr. Bucket, my Lady.” Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over the region of his mouth. “Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?” “No, my Lady, I’ve seen him!” “Have you anything to say to me?” “Not just at present, my Lady.” “Have you made any new discoveries?” “A few, my Lady.” This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going by, out of view. “She’s a lovely woman, too, she really is,” says Mr. Bucket, coming back to Mercury. “Don’t look quite healthy though.” Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from headaches. Really? That’s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks some-times for two hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
“Are you sure you’re quite so much as six foot three?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?” Not a doubt about it. “You’re so well put together that I shouldn’t have thought it. But the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it’s moon-light, though?” Oh, yes. When it’s moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course! Conversational and acquiescent on both sides. “I suppose you ain’t in the habit of walking yourself?” says Mr. Bucket. “Not much time for it, I should say?” Besides which, Mercury don’t like it. Prefers carriage exercise. “To be sure,” says Mr. Bucket. “That makes a difference. Now I think of it,” says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at the blaze, “she went out walking the very night of this business.” “To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.” “And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.” “I didn’t see you,” says Mercury. “I was rather in a hurry,” returns Mr. Bucket, “for I was going to visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea—next door but two to the old original Bun House—ninety year old the old lady is, a single woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the time. Let’s see. What time might it be? It wasn’t ten.” “Half-past nine.” “You’re right. So it was. And if I don’t deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?” “Of course she was.” Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he—this is all he asks—will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties?
Chapter 54
Chapter 54
Springing a Mine Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury “just to mention quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he’s ready for me, I’m ready for him.” A gracious message being returned that Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the blazing coals. Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do, but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he might be a famous whist-player for a large stake—say a hundred guineas certain—with the game in his hand, but with a high reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the idea, a touch of compassion. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much for me. I am subject to—gout”—Sir Leicester was going to say indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket palpably knows all about it—“and recent circumstances have brought it on.” As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain, Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large hands on the library-table. “I am not aware, officer,” Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes to his face, “whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would be interested—” “Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket with his head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear like an earring, “we can’t be too private just at present. You will presently see that we can’t be too private. A lady, under the circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock’s elevated station of society, can’t but be agree-able to me, but speaking without a view to myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can’t be too private.” “That is enough.” “So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket resumes, “that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in the door.” “By all means.” Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that pre-caution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in from the outerside. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed it and collected proof against the person who did this crime.” “Against the soldier?” “No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier.” Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, “Is the man in custody?” Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, “It was a woman.” Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates, “Good heaven!” “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket begins, standing over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the forefinger of the other in impressive use, “it’s my duty to prepare you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. If there’s a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away to Julius Caesar—not to go beyond him at present—have borne that blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family credit. That’s the way you argue, and that’s the way you act, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the el-bows, sits looking at him with a stony face. “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “thus preparing you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to anything having come to my knowledge. I know so much about so many characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less don’t signify a straw. I don’t sup-pose there’s a move on the board that would surprise me, and as to this or that move having taken place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move whatever (provided it’s in a wrong direction) being a probable move according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don’t you go and let yourself be put out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family affairs.” “I thank you for your preparation,” returns Sir Leicester after a silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, “which I hope is not necessary; though I give it credit for being well in-tended. Be so good as to go on. Also”—Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow of his figure—“also, to take a seat, if you have no objection.” None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow. “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come to the point. Lady Dedlock—”
Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely. Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient. “Lady Dedlock, you see she’s universally admired. That’s what her ladyship is; she’s universally admired,” says Mr. Bucket. “I would greatly prefer, officer,” Sir Leicester returns stiffly, “my Lady’s name being entirely omitted from this discussion.” “So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but—it’s impossible.” “Impossible?” Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s altogether impossible. What I have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns on.” “Officer,” retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering lip, “you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring my Lady’s name into this communication upon your responsibility—upon your responsibility. My Lady’s name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!” “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more.” “I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!” Glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of Lady Dedlock.” “If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir—which he never did—I would have killed him myself!” exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes his head. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I can’t quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the sight of some handwriting—in this very house, and when you yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present—the existence, in great poverty, of a certain per-son who had been her lover before you courted her and who ought to have been her husband.” Mr. Bucket stops and deliberately repeats, “Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon after-wards died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed me to reckon up her ladyship—if you’ll excuse my making use of the term we commonly employ—and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a witness who had been Lady Dedlock’s guide, and there couldn’t be the shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman’s dress, unknown to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baron-et, I did endeavour to pave the way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes. All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and through your own Lady. It’s my belief that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after he had left here, she didn’t go down to his chambers with the intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it.” Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is probing the life-blood of his heart. “You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it’s no use, that Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though he’s not in the army now) and knows that she knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I relate all this?” Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness, and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter in-articulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible intelligence. “Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, “put it to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You’ll find, or I’m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very morning when I examined the body! You don’t know what I’m going to say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might wonder why I hadn’t done it, don’t you see?” True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive sounds, says, “True.” At this juncture a considerable noise of voices is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet—on the family account—while I reckon ’em up? And would you just throw in a nod when I seem to ask you for it?” Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, “Officer. The best you can, the best you can!” and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare. “Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen,” says Mr. Bucket in a confidential voice. “I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I am; and this,” producing the tip of his convenient little staff from his breast-pocket, “is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it ain’t every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old gentleman, is Smallweed; that’s what your name is; I know it well.” “Well, and you never heard any harm of it!” cries Mr. Small-weed in a shrill loud voice. “You don’t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?” retorts Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper. “No!” “Why, they killed him,” says Mr. Bucket, “on account of his having so much cheek. Don’t you get into the same position, because it isn’t worthy of you. You ain’t in the habit of conversing with a deaf person, are you?” “Yes,” snarls Mr. Smallweed, “my wife’s deaf.” “That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain’t here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I’ll not only be obliged to you, but it’ll do you more credit,” says Mr. Bucket. “This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?” “Name of Chadband,” Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a much lower key.
“Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name,” says Mr. Bucket, offering his hand, “and consequently feel a liking for it. Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?” “And Mrs. Snagsby,” Mr. Smallweed introduces. “Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own,” says Mr. Bucket. “Love him like a brother! Now, what’s up?” “Do you mean what business have we come upon?” Mr. Smallweed asks, a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn. “Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it’s all about in presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.” Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment’s counsel with him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says aloud, “Yes. You first!” and retires to his former place. “I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn,” pipes Grandfather Smallweed then; “I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was own brother to a brimstone magpie—leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come into Krook’s property. I examined all his papers and all his effects. They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a shelf in the side of Lady Jane’s bed—his cat’s bed. He hid all manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted ’em and got ’em, but I looked ’em over first. I’m a man of business, and I took a squint at ’em. They was letters from the lodger’s sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that’s not a common name, Honoria, is it? There’s no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh, no, I don’t think so! Oh, no, I don’t think so! And not in the same hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don’t think so!” Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, “Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I’m shaken all to pieces!” “Now, when you’re ready,” says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his recovery, “to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.” “Haven’t I come to it, Mr. Bucket?” cries Grandfather Small-weed. “Isn’t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it don’t concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I won’t have ’em disappear so quietly. I handed ’em over to my friend and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else.” “Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,” says Mr. Bucket. “I don’t care for that. I want to know who’s got ’em. And I tell you what we want—what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man.” “Now I tell you what,” says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, “I am damned if I am a-going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time by any human being in creation. You want more painstaking and search-making! You do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don’t know the right time to stretch it out and put it on the arm that fired that shot?” Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize. Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him. “The advice I give you is, don’t you trouble your head about the murder. That’s my affair. You keep half an eye on the news-papers, and I shouldn’t wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that’s all I’ve got to say to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know who’s got ’em. I don’t mind telling you. I have got ’em. Is that the packet?” Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr. Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it as the same.
“What have you got to say next?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Now, don’t open your mouth too wide, because you don’t look hand-some when you do it.” “I want five hundred pound.” “No, you don’t; you mean fifty,” says Mr. Bucket humorously. It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred. “That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business,” says Mr. Bucket—Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head—“and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it’s an unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than that. Hadn’t you better say two fifty?” Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not. “Then,” says Mr. Bucket, “let’s hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time I’ve heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he was in all respects, as ever I come across!” Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, delivers himself as follows, “My friends, we are now—Rachael, my wife, and I—in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are bid-den to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, be-cause we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing, money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.” “You’re a man of business, you are,” returns Mr. Bucket, very attentive, “and consequently you’re going on to mention what the nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn’t do better.” “Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,” says Mr. Chad-band with a cunning eye, “proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!”
Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning smile. “Since you want to know what we know,” says she, “I’ll tell you. I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship’s daughter. I was in the service of her ladyship’s sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her ladyship, that the child was dead—she was very nearly so—when she was born. But she’s alive, and I know her.” With these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word “ladyship,” Mrs. Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket. “I suppose now,” returns that officer, “you will he expecting a twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?” Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can “offer” twenty pence. “My friend the law-stationer’s good lady, over there,” says Mr. Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. “What may your game be, ma’am?” Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook’s Court in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby’s peace. There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence—no doubt—of Mr. Snagsby’s suborning and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, deceased; and they were “all in it.” In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not with particularity ex-press, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby’s son, “as well as if a trumpet had spoken it,” and she followed Mr. Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, and to piece suspicious circumstances together—and every circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr. Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually, by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby’s full exposure and a matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chad-band, and the mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy. While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby’s vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind. “Very good,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now I understand you, you know, and being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little matter,” again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, “can give it my fair and full attention. Now I won’t allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But I tell you what I do wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests. That’s what I look at.”
“We wanted to get in,” pleads Mr. Smallweed. “Why, of course you wanted to get in,” Mr. Bucket asserts with cheerfulness; “but for a old gentleman at your time of life—what I call truly venerable, mind you!—with his wits sharpened, as I have no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to consider that if he don’t keep such a business as the present as close as possible it can’t be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You see your temper got the better of you; that’s where you lost ground,” says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way. “I only said I wouldn’t go without one of the servants came up to Sir Leicester Dedlock,” returns Mr. Smallweed. “That’s it! That’s where your temper got the better of you. Now, you keep it under another time and you’ll make money by it. Shall I ring for them to carry you down?” “When are we to hear more of this?” Mrs. Chadband sternly demands. “Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful sex is!” replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. “I shall have the pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day—not forgetting Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty.” “Five hundred!” exclaims Mr. Smallweed. “All right! Nominally five hundred.” Mr. Bucket has his hand on the bell-rope. “Shall I wish you good day for the present on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?” he asks in an insinuating tone. Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s for you to consider whether or not to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it’s being bought up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand and could have drove ’em his own way, I haven’t a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The cat’s away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended.” Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch. “The party to be apprehended is now in this house,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising spirits, “and I’m about to take her into custody in your presence. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you say a word nor yet stir. There’ll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I’ll come back in the course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you be nervous on account of the apprehension at present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to last.” Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters. Mademoiselle Hortense. The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in his chair. “I ask you pardon,” she mutters hurriedly. “They tell me there was no one here.” Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket. Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale. “This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” says Mr. Bucket, nodding at her. “This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks back.” “What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?” returns mademoiselle in a jocular strain. “Why, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket, “we shall see.” Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, “You are very mysterieuse. Are you drunk?”
“Tolerable sober, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket. “I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife. Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What is the intention of this fool’s play, say then?” mademoiselle demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beating like a clock. Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her. “Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!” cries mademoiselle with a toss of her head and a laugh. “Leave me to pass down-stairs, great pig.” With a stamp of her foot and a menace. “Now, mademoiselle,” says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, “you go and sit down upon that sofy.” “I will not sit down upon nothing,” she replies with a shower of nods. “Now, mademoiselle,” repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration except with the finger, “you sit down upon that sofy.” “Why?” “Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don’t need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a foreigner if I can. If I can’t, I must be rough, and there’s rougher ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go and sit down upon that sofy.” Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that something in her cheek beats fast and hard, “You are a devil.” “Now, you see,” Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, “you’re comfortable and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of your sense to do. So I’ll give you a piece of advice, and it’s this, don’t you talk too much. You’re not expected to say anything here, and you can’t keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the less you parlay, the better, you know.” Mr. Bucket is very complacent over this French explanation. Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her hands clenched—and her feet too, one might suppose—muttering, “Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!” “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” says Mr. Bucket, and from this time forth the finger never rests, “this young woman, my lodger, was her ladyship’s maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate against her ladyship after being discharged—” “Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I discharge myself.” “Now, why don’t you take my advice?” returns Mr. Bucket in an impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. “I’m surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. You’ll say something that’ll be used against you, you know. You’re sure to come to it. Never you mind what I say till it’s given in evidence. It is not ad-dressed to you.” “Discharge, too,” cries mademoiselle furiously, “by her lady-ship! Eh, my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with a ladyship so infame!” “Upon my soul I wonder at you!” Mr. Bucket remonstrates. “I thought the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!” “He is a poor abused!” cries mademoiselle. “I spit upon his house, upon his name, upon his imbecility,” all of which she makes the carpet represent. “Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh, heaven! Bah!” “Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “this in-temperate foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by at-tending on the occasion I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her time and trouble.” “Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I ref-use his money all togezzer.” “If you will parlay, you know,” says Mr. Bucket parenthetic-ally, “you must take the consequences. Now, whether she be-came my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer.”
“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “All lie!” “The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything. From in-formation I received (from a clerk in the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions—even threatening him, as the witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!” As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—for him—and inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly together. “I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever—in fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!” Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and lips the words, “You are a devil.” “Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult; and I laid a trap for her—such a trap as I never laid yet, and such a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise and told her all about it. My dear, don’t you give your mind to that again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.” Mr. Bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon ma-demoiselle and laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder. “What is the matter with you now?” she asks him. “Don’t you think any more,” returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory finger, “of throwing yourself out of window. That’s what’s the matter with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn’t get up; I’ll sit down by you. Now take my arm, will you? I’m a married man, you know; you’re acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.” Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound she struggles with herself and complies. “Now we’re all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a woman in fifty thousand—in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house since, though I’ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker’s loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, ‘My dear, can you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions against George, and this, and that, and t’other? Can you do without rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say, ‘She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I have got her, if she did this murder?’ Mrs. Bucket says to me, as well as she could speak on account of the sheet, ‘Bucket, I can!’ And she has acted up to it glorious!” “Lies!” mademoiselle interposes. “All lies, my friend!” “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right? I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give you a turn? To throw the murder on her ladyship.”
Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again. “And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was al-ways here, which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words ‘Lady Dedlock’ in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I stopped this very morning, and read the three words ‘Lady Dedlock, Murderess’ in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place having seen them all ‘written by this young woman? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having, within this half- hour, secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of ’em every one by this young woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baron-et?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration of his lady’s genius. Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and con-tract about her as if a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure. “There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful period,” says Mr. Bucket, “and my foreign friend here saw her, I believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another’s heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go into it. I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and finds the wad-ding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.” “These are very long lies,” mademoiselle interposes. “You prose great deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking always?”
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now going to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night, when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home looking—why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the ocean—it was so unpleasant and in-consistent to think of her being charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here pro-posed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to fetch her pocket handkercher from the bed-room where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket, along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and hold it steady, and I shan’t hurt you!” In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. “That’s one,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!” He rises; she rises too. “Where,” she asks him, darkening her large eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them—and yet they stare, “where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?”
“She’s gone forrard to the Police Office,” returns Mr. Bucket. “You’ll see her there, my dear.” “I would like to kiss her!” exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like. “You’d bite her, I suspect,” says Mr. Bucket. “I would!” making her eyes very large. “I would love to tear her limb from limb.” “Bless you, darling,” says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure, “I’m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ. You don’t mind me half so much, do you?” “No. Though you are a devil still.” “Angel and devil by turns, eh?” cries Mr. Bucket. “But I am in my regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy. I’ve been lady’s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to the bonnet? There’s a cab at the door.” Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice, uncommonly genteel. “Listen then, my angel,” says she after several sarcastic nods. “You are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?” Mr. Bucket answers, “Not exactly.” “That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you make a honourable lady of her?” “Don’t be so malicious,” says Mr. Bucket. “Or a haughty gentleman of him?” cries mademoiselle, refer-ring to Sir Leicester with ineffable disdain. “Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!” “Come, come, why this is worse parlaying than the other,” says Mr. Bucket. “Come along!” “You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me. It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my an-gel. Adieu, you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!” With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of his affections.
Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at something. Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms. It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired, honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her, almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her cast down from the high place she has graced so well. And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and compassion rather than reproach.
Chapter 55
Chapter 55
Flight Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow, as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire, making its way towards London. Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the night, the post-chaise makes its way without a rail-road on its mind. Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it often to her lips. “You are a mother, my dear soul,” says she many times, “and you found out my George’s mother!” “Why, George,” returns Mrs. Bagnet, “was always free with me, ma’am, and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line into his mother’s face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that he had behaved bad to her.” “Never, my dear!” returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. “My blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me, was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he didn’t rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn’t be a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from a baby!” The old lady’s hands stray about her as of yore, while she re-calls, all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its load of affectionate distress. Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while—not without passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes— and presently chirps up in her cheery manner, “So I says to George when I goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe outside), ‘What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy penitent.’ ‘Why, Mrs. Bagnet,’ says George, ‘it’s because I am melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.’
‘What have you done, old fellow?’ I says. ‘Why, Mrs. Bagnet,’ says George, shaking his head, ‘what I have done has been done this many a long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to heaven it won’t be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no more.’ Now, ma’am, when George says to me that it’s best not tried to be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the lawyer’s office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite for-gets himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old lady he has seen? And George tells me it’s Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before that he’s a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night, ‘Lignum, that’s his mother for five and for-ty pound!’” All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the hum of the wheels. “Bless you, and thank you,” says Mrs. Rouncewell. “Bless you, and thank you, my worthy soul!” “Dear heart!” cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. “No thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma’am, for being so ready to pay ’em! And mind once more, ma’am, what you had best do on finding George to be your own son is to make him—for your sake —have every sort of help to put him-self in the right and clear himself of a charge 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 en-joys 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 al-ways 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 obtain-able 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 make up my mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done so much to raise himself while I’ve been soldiering that I haven’t brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any pleasure in such a discovery? It’s impossible. No, keep my secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my secret from my brother, of all men.” “But not always, dear George?” “Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all—though I may come to ask that too—but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it’s ever broke to him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish,” says the trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, “to break it myself and be governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems to take it.” As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet’s face, his mother yields her implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
“In all other respects, my dear mother, I’ll be as tractable and obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,” he glances at his writing on the table, “an exact account of what I knew of the deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair. It’s entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in it but what’s wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not to have any.” Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again the old lady hangs upon her son’s neck, and again and again the trooper holds her to his broad chest. “Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?” “I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some business there that must be looked to directly,” Mrs. Rouncewell answers. “Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of course I know you will. Why should I ask it!” Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella. “Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand pound in gold, my dear!” So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the old girl’s tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell. No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will in-duce Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs. Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off, arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened. My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so leisurely, when a tap comes at the door.
Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell. What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly? “Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with you?” What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange mistrust? “What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath.” “Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son—my youngest, who went away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison.” “For debt?” “Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful.” “For what is he in prison then?” “Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as—as I am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn.” What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does she come so close? What is the letter that she holds? “Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I was in this family before you were born. I am de-voted to it. But think of my dear son wrongfully accused.” “I do not accuse him.” “No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger. Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say it!” What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? Her Lady’s handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear. “My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in my old age, and the step upon the Ghost’s Walk was so constant and so solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last night, my Lady, I got this letter.” “What letter is it?” “Hush! Hush!” The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened whisper, “My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don’t believe what’s written in it, I know it can’t be true, I am sure and certain that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your friends; and all who admire you—and all do —as a beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can’t be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady,” the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, “I am so humble in my place and you are by nature so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child, but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or justice at this fearful time!” Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter from her hand. “Am I to read this?” “When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the most that I consider possible.” “I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can affect your son. I have never accused him.” “My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after reading the letter.” The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now. She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with the word “murderess” attached. It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her head before she begins to under-stand them. “Let him come in!” He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr. Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, chilling state. “Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from one who has never been welcome to your ladyship”—which he don’t complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any particular reason on the face of things why he should be— “but I hope when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault with me,” says Mr. Guppy. “Do so.” “Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your lady-ship,” Mr. Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at his feet, “that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my ‘eart until erased by circumstances over which I had no control, communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson’s wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again.” And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
“And yet I am here now,” Mr. Guppy admits. “My object being to communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am here.” He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. “Nor can I,” Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, “too particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that it’s no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred—I, in point of fact, shouldn’t have darkened these doors again, but should have seen ’em further first.” Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair with both hands. “Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely difficult for me to be sure that I hadn’t in-advertently led up to something contrary to Miss Summerson’s wishes. Self-praise is no recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man of business neither.” Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else. “Indeed, it has been made so hard,” he goes on, “to have any idea what that party was up to in combination with others that until the loss which we all deplore I was gravelled—an expression which your ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise—a name by which I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not acquainted with—got to be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn’t easy to keep one’s hands off his ‘ead. However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn and has your ladyship’s portrait always hanging up in his room), I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don’t mean fashionable visit-ors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss Barbary’s old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?” “No!” “Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an hour’s turn afterwards to avoid them.” “What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand you. What do you mean?” “Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what we have cork-screwed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown upon, it is blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or making.” Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises. “Your ladyship, you know best whether there’s anything in what I say or whether there’s nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss Summerson’s wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that’s sufficient for me. In case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your guard when there’s no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and assure you that there’s no danger of your ever being waited on by me again.” She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell. “Where is Sir Leicester?” Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone. “Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?”
Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go. So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—may be spreading while she thinks about it—and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy. Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead. Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the hangman’s hands were at her neck. She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense. For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed, however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure was laid low—which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to think, “if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take him from my way!” it was but wishing that all he held against her in his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places. So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was his death but the key- stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal! Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed—there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind. She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves them on her table: If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me, for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him and make one last petition that he would not protract the dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next morning. I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but there was no reply, and I came home. I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous devotion—who avoids you only with a deeper shame than that with which she hurries from herself—and who writes this last adieu. She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
Chapter 56
Chapter 56
Pursuit Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle, doors are battered at, the world ex-changes calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk in-to downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broad-wise, a spectacle for the angels. The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession. The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description. Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of hovering over her kinsman’s letters and papers like a bird, taking a short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of these re-searches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled tree. Volumnia’s pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion. Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living languages, and all the dead, are as one to him. They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even his hand in token that he hears and comprehends. He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers sounds like what it is—mere jumble and jargon. His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it. After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants and brings in a slate. After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that is not his, “Chesney Wold?”
No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to London and is able to attend upon him. “It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say so.” This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face. After making a survey of the room and looking with particular attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, “My Lady.” “My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and don’t know of your illness yet.” He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate once more and writes “My Lady. For God’s sake, where?” And makes an imploring moan. It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady Dedlock’s letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise. She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his faithful and attached old servant’s arm. The doctors know that he is best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof. The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket. Thank heaven! That’s his meaning. Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come up? There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester’s burning wish to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I’m sorry to see you like this. I hope you’ll cheer up. I’m sure you will, on account of the family credit.” Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket’s eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is still glancing over the words, he indicates, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I understand you.” Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. “Full forgiveness. Find—” Mr. Bucket stops his hand. “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I’ll find her. But my search after her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost.” With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock’s look towards a little box upon a table. “Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? To be sure. Take the notes out? So I will. Count ’em? That’s soon done. Twenty and thirty’s fifty, and twenty’s seventy, and fifty’s one twenty, and forty’s one sixty. Take ’em for expenses? That I’ll do, and render an account of course. Don’t spare money? No I won’t.” The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket’s interpretation on all these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he starts up, furnished for his journey. “You’re George’s mother, old lady; that’s about what you are, I believe?” says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and buttoning his coat. “Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother.” “So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well, then, I’ll tell you something. You needn’t be distressed no more. Your son’s all right. Now, don’t you begin a - crying, because what you’ve got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you won’t do that by crying. As to your son, he’s all right, I tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you’re the same. He’s discharged honourable; that’s about what he is; with no more imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a tidy one, I’LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he’s a fine-made man, and you’re a fine-made old lady, and you’re a mother and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you’ve trusted to me I’ll go through with. Don’t you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baron-et, I will. And I wish you better, and these family affairs smoothed over—as, Lord, many other family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of time.” With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night in quest of the fugitive. His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock’s rooms and look all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to see a sight—which nobody does see, as he is particular to lock himself in. “A spicy boudoir, this,” says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. “Must have cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!” Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, and moralizes thereon. “One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and getting myself up for almac’s,” says Mr. Bucket. “I begin to think I must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.” Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white handkerchief. “Hum! Let’s have a look at you,” says Mr. Bucket, putting down the light. “What should you be kept by yourself for?
What’s your motive? Are you her ladyship’s property, or some-body else’s? You’ve got a mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?” He finds it as he speaks, “Esther Summerson.” “Oh!” says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. “Come, I’ll take you.” He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it, glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir Leicester’s room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest coach- stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he knows him. His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the snow lies thin—for something may present itself to assist him, anywhere—he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam. “Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I’ll be back.” He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his pipe. “I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my lad. I haven’t a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman. Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died—that was the name, I know—all right—where does she live?” The trooper has just come from there and gives him the ad-dress, near Oxford Street. “You won’t repent it, George. Good night!”
He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again, and gets out in a cloud of steam again. Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed, rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and comes down to the door in his dressing-gown. “Don’t be alarmed, sir.” In a moment his visitor is confidential with him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the lock. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you be-fore. Inspector Bucket. Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson’s. Found it myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock’s, quarter of an hour ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady Dedlock?” “Yes.” “There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit—apoplexy or paralysis—and couldn’t be brought to, and precious time has been lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!” Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks. “I don’t know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there’s more and more danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I’d give a hundred pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss Summerson.” Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, “Miss Summerson?” “Now, Mr. Jarndyce”—Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest attention all along—“I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don’t often happen. If ever delay was dangerous, it’s dangerous now; and if ever you couldn’t afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest that’s heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for—I ask no question, and I say no more than that—she will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for’ard, and I’ll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come up with her alone—a hard matter—and I’ll do my best, but I don’t answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it’s getting on for one o’clock. When one strikes, there’s another hour gone, and it’s worth a thousand pound now instead of a hundred.” This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr. Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and awaits her coming at the door. There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide. Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the river’s level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention. Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an en-chanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw- roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of human torture—traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
Chapter 57
Chapter 57
Esther's Narrative I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester Dedlock’s. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door who was em-powered to convey to her the fullest assurances of affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my en-treaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to my-self, fully to recover my right mind until hours had passed. But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr. Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian’s candle, read to me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets. His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were, chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to consider—taking time to think—whether within my knowledge there was any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of mentioning my mother’s name and with what my guardian had informed me of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with her unhappy story. My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation, that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough to understand it. We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and calling out at distant doors under-ground, to which nobody paid any attention. A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket’s subdued dictation. It was a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was very accurate indeed. The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.
“Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?” he asked me as his eyes met mine. “It’s a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out in.” I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed. “It may be a long job,” he observed; “but so that it ends well, never mind, miss.” “I pray to heaven it may end well!” said I. He nodded comfortingly. “You see, whatever you do, don’t you go and fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may happen, and it’ll be the better for you, the better for me, the better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.” He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire warming his boots and rubbing his face with his fore-finger, I felt a confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a quarter to two when I heard horses’ feet and wheels outside. “Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, “we are off, if you please!” He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out, and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a few directions to the driver, we rattled away. I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside, dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships. At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I could discern the words, “Found Drowned”; and this and an inscription about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place.
I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some slippery steps—as if to look at something secret that he had to show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared! After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little rush towards me. It never did so—and I thought it did so, hundreds of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and probably was less—but the thought shuddered through me that it would cast my mother at the horses’ feet. Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigil-ant, darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. “Don’t you be alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here,” he said, turning to me. “I only want to have everything in train and to know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!” We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging from the general character of the streets. We called at another office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion, wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet, he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look, so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat lines of shore—so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it many times since then, by sunlight and by moon-light, but never free from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling on, and the light of the carriage- lamps reflected back looks palely in upon me—a face rising out of the dreaded water. Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we changed and went on. It was very cold in-deed, and the open country was white with snow, though none was falling then. “An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket cheerfully. “Yes,” I returned. “Have you gathered any intelligence?” “None that can be quite depended on as yet,” he answered, “but it’s early times as yet.” He had gone into every late or early public-house where there was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the turnpike- keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money, and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business tone, “Get on, my lad!” With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o’clock and we were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of these houses and handed me in a cup of tea. “Drink it, Miss Summerson, it’ll do you good. You’re beginning to get more yourself now, ain’t you?” I thanked him and said I hoped so. “You was what you may call stunned at first,” he returned; “and Lord, no wonder! Don’t speak loud, my dear. It’s all right. She’s on ahead.” I don’t know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but he put up his finger and I stopped myself.
“Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but couldn’t make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she’s before us now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you wasn’t brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can catch half a crown in your t’other hand. One, two, three, and there you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!” We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready, my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home. “As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see,” he observed, “I should like to know whether you’ve been asked for by any stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I don’t much expect it, but it might be.” As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye—the day was now breaking—and reminded me that I had come down it one night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor Jo, whom he called Toughey. I wondered how he knew that. “When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know,” said Mr. Bucket. Yes, I remembered that too, very well. “That was me,” said Mr. Bucket. Seeing my surprise, he went on, “I drove down in a gig that afternoon to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I observed you bringing him home here.” “Had he committed any crime?” I asked. “None was charged against him,” said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off his hat, “but I suppose he wasn’t over-particular. No. What I wanted him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn’t do, at any sort of price, to have him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he was away, and go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn’t catch him coming back again.” “Poor creature!” said I. “Poor enough,” assented Mr. Bucket, “and trouble enough, and well enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure you.” I asked him why. “Why, my dear?” said Mr. Bucket. “Naturally there was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a yard and a half of it, and a remnant over.” Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me. With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the garden-gate. “Ah!” said Mr. Bucket. “Here we are, and a nice retired place it is. Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker- tapping, that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They’re early with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what you’ve always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see ’em; you never know what they’re up to if you don’t know that. And another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose.” We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the windows. “Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room when he’s on a visit here, Miss Summerson?” he inquired, glancing at Mr. Skimpole’s usual chamber. “You know Mr. Skimpole!” said I.
“What do you call him again?” returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his ear. “Skimpole, is it? I’ve often wondered what his name might be. Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?” “Harold,” I told him. “Harold. Yes. He’s a queer bird is Harold,” said Mr. Bucket, eyeing me with great expression. “He is a singular character,” said I. “No idea of money,” observed Mr. Bucket. “He takes it, though!” I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Buck-et knew him. “Why, now I’ll tell you, Miss Summerson,” he replied. “Your mind will be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and I’ll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first, if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I have had a look at him, thinks I, you’re the man for me. So I smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows in the gayest way, ‘It’s no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my friend, because I’m a mere child in such matters and have no idea of money.’ Of course I under-stood what his taking it so easy meant; and being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and looks as innocent as you like, and says, ‘But I don’t know the value of these things. What am I to do with this?’ ‘Spend it, sir,’ says I. ‘But I shall be taken in,’ he says, ‘they won’t give me the right change, I shall lose it, it’s no use to me.’ Lord, you never saw such a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find Toughey, and I found him.”
I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skim-pole towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence. “Bounds, my dear?” returned Mr. Bucket. “Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson, I’ll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful when you are happily married and have got a family about you. Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you ‘In worldly matters I’m a child,’ you consider that that person is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have got that person’s number, and it’s Number One. Now, I am not a poetic-al man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a company, but I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell, and so go back to our business.” I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be doubted that this was the truth. “Then, Miss Summerson,” said my companion, “we can’t be too soon at the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries there I leave to you, if you’ll be so good as to make ’em. The naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own way.” We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place, which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I pushed it open.
There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently knew him. I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not help bursting into tears. “Liz,” said I, “I have come a long way in the night and through the snow to inquire after a lady—” “Who has been here, you know,” Mr. Bucket struck in, ad-dressing the whole group with a composed propitiatory face; “that’s the lady the young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know.” “And who told you as there was anybody here?” inquired Jenny’s husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now measured him with his eye. “A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl but-tons,” Mr. Bucket immediately answered. “He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is,” growled the man. “He’s out of employment, I believe,” said Mr. Bucket apologetically for Michael Jackson, “and so gets talking.” The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an oath to mind her own business at any rate and sit down. “I should like to have seen Jenny very much,” said I, “for I am sure she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very anxious indeed—you cannot think how anxious—to overtake. Will Jenny be here soon? Where is she?” The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to Jenny’s husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the latter turned his shaggy head towards me. “I’m not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you’ve heerd me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it’s curious they can’t let my place be. There’d be a pretty shine made if I was to go a-wisitin them, I think. Howsoever, I don’t so much complain of you as of some others, and I’m agreeable to make you a civil answer, though I give notice that I’m not a-going to be drawed like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won’t. Where is she? She’s gone up to Lunnun.” “Did she go last night?” I asked. “Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night,” he answered with a sulky jerk of his head. “But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as to tell me,” said I, “for I am in great distress to know.” “If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm—” the woman timidly began. “Your master,” said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow emphasis, “will break your neck if you meddle with wot don’t concern you.” After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness. “Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I’ll tell you wot the lady said to her. She said, ‘You remember me as come one time to talk to you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had left?’ Ah, she re-membered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young lady up at the house now? No, she warn’t up at the house now. Well, then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as we might think it, and could she rest herself where you’re a setten for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went—it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty minutes past twelve; we ain’t got no watches here to know the time by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don’t know where she go’d. She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun, and t’other went right from it. That’s all about it. Ask this man. He heerd it all, and see it all. He knows.” The other man repeated, “That’s all about it.” “Was the lady crying?” I inquired. “Devil a bit,” returned the first man. “Her shoes was the worse, and her clothes was the worse, but she warn’t—not as I see. The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute his threat if she disobeyed him. “I hope you will not object to my asking your wife,” said I, “how the lady looked.” “Come, then!” he gruffly cried to her. “You hear what she says. Cut it short and tell her.” “Bad,” replied the woman. “Pale and exhausted. Very bad.” “Did she speak much?” “Not much, but her voice was hoarse.” She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave. “Was she faint?” said I. “Did she eat or drink here?” “Go on!” said the husband in answer to her look. “Tell her and cut it short.” “She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and tea. But she hardly touched it.” “And when she went from here,” I was proceeding, when Jenny’s husband impatiently took me up. “When she went from here, she went right away nor’ard by the high road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn’t so. Now, there’s the end. That’s all about it.” I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he looked full at her. ”
“Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me as we walked quickly away. “They’ve got her ladyship’s watch among ’em. That’s a positive fact.” “You saw it?” I exclaimed. “Just as good as saw it,” he returned. “Else why should he talk about his ‘twenty minutes past’ and about his having no watch to tell the time by? Twenty minutes! He don’t usually cut his time so fine as that. If he comes to half-hours, it’s as much as he does. Now, you see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should she give it him for?” He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on, appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his mind. “If time could be spared,” said Mr. Bucket, “which is the only thing that can’t be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman; but it’s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that ill uses her through thick and thin. There’s something kept back. It’s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.” I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine. “It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it, “that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don’t come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the cards. Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don’t see my way to the usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is for’ard—straight ahead—and keeping everything quiet!” We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage. The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we were on the road again in a few minutes. It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned—with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells —under the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last. I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my companion’s better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every wag-goner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll- taker, yet never seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady face and his business-like “Get on, my lad!” When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off him—plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been doing frequently since we left Saint Albans—and spoke to me at the carriage side. “Keep up your spirits. It’s certainly true that she came on here, Miss Summerson. There’s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and the dress has been seen here.” “Still on foot?” said I. “Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point she’s aiming at, and yet I don’t like his living down in her own part of the country neither.” “I know so little,” said I. “There may be some one else nearer here, of whom I never heard.” “That’s true. But whatever you do, don’t you fall a-crying, my dear; and don’t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my lad!”
The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early, and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had been out, it presented itself as an in-definite period of great duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free from the anxiety under which I then laboured. As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of one long weary stage. I over-heard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he said, “Get on, my lad!” At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the next stage might set us right again. The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue. There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to refuse. They took me up-stairs to a warm room and left me there. It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage, and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees. Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the window- pane. As I looked among the stems of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now welcomed me and of my mother lying down in such a wood to die. I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I re-membered that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her words and compromised for a rest of half an hour. A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr. Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made some recompense. Punctual to the time, at the half-hour’s end the carriage came rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed, comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, the youngest daughter—a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the first married, they had told me—got upon the carriage step, reached in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think of her to this hour as my friend. The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the box—I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco—was as vigil-ant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head, but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope. We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an excited and quite different man. “What is it?” said I, starting. “Is she here?” “No, no. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody’s here. But I’ve got it!” The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his breath before he spoke to me. “Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, beating his finger on the apron, “don’t you be disappointed at what I’m a-going to do. You know me. I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We’ve come a long way; never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!” There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the stables to know if he meant up or down. “Up, I tell you! Up! Ain’t it English? Up!” “Up?” said I, astonished. “To London! Are we going back?” “Miss Summerson,” he answered, “back. Straight back as a die. You know me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll follow the other, by G—” “The other?” I repeated. “Who?” “You called her Jenny, didn’t you? I’ll follow her. Bring those two pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!”
“You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her to be in!” said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand. “You are right, my dear, I won’t. But I’ll follow the other. Look alive here with them horses. Send a man for’ard in the saddle to the next stage, and let him send another for’ard again, and order four on, up, right through. My darling, don’t you be afraid!” These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted man galloped away to order the re-lays, and our horses were put to with great speed. “My dear,” said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again, “—you’ll excuse me if I’m too familiar—don’t you fret and worry yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present; but you know me, my dear; now, don’t you?” I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right? Could I not go forward by myself in search of—I grasped his hand again in my distress and whispered it to him—of my own mother. “My dear,” he answered, “I know, I know, and would I put you wrong, do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don’t you?” What could I say but yes! “Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Now, are you right there?” “All right, sir!” “Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!” We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a waterwheel.
Chapter 58
Chapter 58
A Wintry Day a nd Nig ht Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky; and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to re-turn presently. Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire. It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears, my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something wrong at the Dedlocks’ is to augur yourself unknown. One of the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the Lords on Sir Leicester’s application for a bill of divorce. At Blaze and Sparkle’s the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss’s the mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age, the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments, albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured there as any other article of the stockin-trade, are perfectly understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter. “Our people, Mr. Jones,” said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in question on engaging him, “our people, sir, are sheep—mere sheep. Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock.” So, likewise, Sheen and Gloss to their Jones, in reference to knowing where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they (Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, “Why yes, sir, there certainly are reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very cur-rent indeed among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk about something, sir; and it’s only to get a subject into vogue with one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole. Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You’ll find, sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like a clock, sir.” Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards’ time, it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables, which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received in turf-circles. At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it? How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never came out before—positively say things! William Buffy carries one of these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House, where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under the corner of his wig) cries, “Order at the bar!” three times without making an impression. And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the con-fines of Mr. Sladdery’s high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend that she is their topic too, and to re-tail her at second- hand with the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl, and the last new polite in-difference, and all the rest of it, all at second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters on such majestic crutches! So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it? Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest, and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole wintry day. Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he would write and whispers, “No, he has not come back yet, Sir Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a little time gone yet.” He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy whirl of white flakes and icy blots. He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself. He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a heavy heart obeys. “For I dread, George,” the old lady says to her son, who waits below to keep her company when she has a little leisure, “I dread, my dear, that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls.” “That’s a bad presentiment, mother.” “Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear.” “That’s worse. But why, mother?” “When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me—and I may say at me too—as if the step on the Ghost’s Walk had almost walked her down.” “Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother.” “No I don’t, my dear. No I don’t. It’s going on for sixty year that I have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before. But it’s breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is breaking up.” “I hope not, mother.” “I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be. But the step on the Ghost’s Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it has been many a day be-hind her, and now it will pass her and go on.” “Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not.” “Ah, so do I, George,” the old lady returns, shaking her head and parting her folded hands. “But if my fears come true, and he has to know it, who will tell him!” “Are these her rooms?” “These are my Lady’s rooms, just as she left them.” “Why, now,” says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a lower voice, “I begin to understand how you come to think as you do think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them, and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows where.” He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady’s state has a hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment, where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel. The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs. Rouncewell’s place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter, has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at her kinsman’s eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, “He is asleep.” In disproof of which superfluous re-mark Sir Leicester has indignantly written on the slate, “I am not.” Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed, sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, “Who will tell him!” He has been under his valet’s hands this morning to be made presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will al-low. He is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to his hand. It is necessary—less to his own dignity now perhaps than for her sake—that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously. The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who can-not long continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as what’s his name, her favourite Life Guardsman —the man she dotes on, the dearest of creatures—who was killed at Waterloo. Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it necessary to explain. “Miss Dedlock don’t speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my youngest. I have found him. He has come home.” Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. “George? Your son George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?” The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. “Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester.” Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he think, “Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in his?” It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be understood. “Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?” “It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being well enough to be talked to of such things.” Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell’s son and that she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir Leicester as soon as he got better. “Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?” asks Sir Leicester, Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the doctor’s injunctions, replies, in London. “Where in London?” Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house. “Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly.” The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester, with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his hearing wheels. He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow, squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily ashamed of himself. “Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!” exclaims Sir Leicester. “Do you remember me, George?” The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a little helped by his mother, he replies, “I must have a very bad memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to re-member you.” “When I look at you, George Rouncewell,” Sir Leicester observes with difficulty, “I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold—I remember well—very well.” He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he looks at the sleet and snow again. “I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester,” says the trooper, “but would you accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir Leicester, if you would allow me to move you.” “If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good.” The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him, and turns him with his face more towards the window.
“Thank you. You have your mother’s gentleness,” returns Sir Leicester, “and your own strength. Thank you.” He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to. “Why did you wish for secrecy?” It takes Sir Leicester some time to ask this. “Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I—I should still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed—which I hope you will not be long—I should still hope for the favour of being allowed to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir Leicester, that I am not much to boast of.” “You have been a soldier,” observes Sir Leicester, “and a faithful one.” George makes his military bow. “As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do.” “You find me,” says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted towards him, “far from well, George Rouncewell.” “I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester.” “I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens,” making an endeavour to pass one hand down one side, “and confuses,” touching his lips. George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold arise before them both and soften both. Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his own manner, something that is on his mind before re-lapsing into silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more. George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and places him as he desires to be. “Thank you, George. You are another self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold, George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very familiar.” He has put Sir Leicester’s sounder arm over his shoulder in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again as he says these words. “I was about to add,” he presently goes on, “I was about to add, respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a slight misunderstanding between my Lady and my-self. I do not mean that there was any difference between us (for there has been none), but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while, of my Lady’s society. She has found it necessary to make a journey—I trust will shortly re-turn. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible? The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing them.” Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself with far greater plainness than could have been sup-posed possible a minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his purpose enables him to make it. “Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence—and in the presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold—in case I should relapse, in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech and the power of writing, though I hope for better things—” The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with his arms folded and his head a little bent, respect-fully attentive. “Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to witness— be-ginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly—that I am on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me.” Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his in-junctions to the letter.
“My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am on unaltered terms with her, and I recall—having the full power to do it if I were so disposed, as you see—no act I have done for her ad-vantage and happiness.” His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the dust shine equally. Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds. In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him. Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his mother’s chair. The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like fiery fish out of water—as they are. The world, which has been rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, “to inquire,” begins to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not dark enough yet. His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late. “Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master,” she softly whispers, “I must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just the same.” “I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak—and he has been so long gone.” “Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet.” “But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!” He says it with a groan that wrings her heart. She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her. Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered self-command, “As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the room!” When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left to him to listen. But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he bright-ens when a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him. Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbour-hood there are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that, and all is heavier than before. The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and George keep watch in Sir Leicester’s room. As the night lags tardily on—or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and three o’clock—they find a restless craving on him to know more about the weather, now he can-not see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling and even the stone footways lying ankle- deep in icy sludge. Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase—the second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black tea—is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in the event, as she expresses it, “of anything happening” to Sir Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in the known world. An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost, particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who, impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of countenance. The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock, sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian genius the maid. “How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?” inquires Volumnia, adjusting her cowl over her head. “Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill, and he even wanders a little sometimes.” “Has he asked for me?” inquires Volumnia tenderly. “Why, no, I can’t say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to say.” “This is a truly sad time, Mr. George.” “It is indeed, miss. Hadn’t you better go to bed?” “You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock,” quoth the maid sharply. But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted at a moment’s notice. She never should forgive herself “if anything was to happen” and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester’s), but staunchly declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a merit of not having “closed an eye”—as if she had twenty or thirty—though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having most indisputably opened two within five minutes. But when it comes to four o’clock, and still the same blank, Volumnia’s constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact, howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her, as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper reappears with his, “Hadn’t you bet-ter go to bed, miss?” and when the maid protests, more sharply than before, “You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock!” she meekly rises and says, “Do with me what you think best!” Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly, these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the house to himself. There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of the great door—under it, into the corners of the windows, into every chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is falling still; upon the roof, upon the sky-light, even through the skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost’s Walk, on the stone floor below. The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur of a great house—no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold— goes up the stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm’s length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks, and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space; thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind; thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the master of the house up-stairs and of the foreboding, “Who will tell him!” he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he might see something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the darkness above and below, while he goes up the great stair-case again, blank as the oppressive silence. “All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?” “Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester.” “No word of any kind?” The trooper shakes his head. “No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?” But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down without looking for an answer.
Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, “Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who will tell him!”
Chapter 59
Chapter 59
Esther's Narrative It was three o’clock in the morning when the houses outside London did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard any variation in his cool, “Get on, my lads!” The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we came, at between three and four o’clock in the morning, into Islington. I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.
We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from the rest. “Why, my dear!” he said as he did this. “How wet you are!” I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and comfortable. “Now, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after I was shut up. “We’re a-going to mark this person down. It may take a little time, but you don’t mind that. You’re pretty sure that I’ve got a motive. Ain’t you?” I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence in him. “So you may have, my dear,” he returned. “And I tell you what! If you only repose half as much confidence in me as I re-pose in you after what I’ve experienced of you, that’ll do. Lord! You’re no trouble at all. I never see a young woman in any station of society—and I’ve seen many elevated ones too—conduct herself like you have conducted yourself since you was called out of your bed. You’re a pattern, you know, that’s what you are,” said Mr. Bucket warmly; “you’re a pattern.” I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now. “My dear,” he returned, “when a young lady is as mild as she’s game, and as game as she’s mild, that’s all I ask, and more than I expect. She then becomes a queen, and that’s about what you are yourself.” With these encouraging words—they really were encouraging to me under those lonely and anxious circumstances—he got upon the box, and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in Lon-don. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such streets, and we never failed to do so. Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. This would at-tract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many in-sects, and a fresh consultation would be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go. At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking very busy and very attentive. “Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me, “you won’t be alarmed whatever comes off, I know. It’s not necessary for me to give you any further caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and that you may be of use to me be-fore I know it myself. I don’t like to ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?” Of course I got out directly and took his arm. “It ain’t so easy to keep your feet,” said Mr. Bucket, “but take time.” Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the street, I thought I knew the place. “Are we in Holborn?” I asked him. “Yes,” said Mr. Bucket. “Do you know this turning?” “It looks like Chancery Lane.” “And was christened so, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket. We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room.
In the same moment I heard an exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his voice very well. It was so unexpected and so—I don’t know what to call it, whether pleasant or painful—to come upon it after my feverish wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange country. “My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such weather!” He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I told him that we had but just left a coach and were going—but then I was obliged to look at my companion. “Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt”—he had caught the name from me—“we are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket.” Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me. “That’s a good move, too,” said Mr. Bucket, assisting, “a very good move.” “May I go with you?” said Mr. Woodcourt. I don’t know whether to me or to my companion. “Why, Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. “Of course you may.” It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in the cloak. “I have just left Richard,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “I have been sitting with him since ten o’clock last night.” “Oh, dear me, he is ill!” “No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was de-pressed and faint—you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes—and Ada sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while, and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!”
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my appearance: “I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!” We now turned into another narrow street. “Mr. Woodcourt,” said Mr. Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, “our business takes us to a law-stationer’s here, a certain Mr. Snagsby’s. What, you know him, do you?” He was so quick that he saw it in an instant. “Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place.” “Indeed, sir?” said Mr. Bucket. “Then you will be so good as to let me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have half a word with him?” The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my saying I heard some one crying. “Don’t be alarmed, miss,” he returned. “It’s Snagsby’s servant.” “Why, you see,” said Mr. Bucket, “the girl’s subject to fits, and has ’em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to reason somehow.” “At all events, they wouldn’t be up yet if it wasn’t for her, Mr. Bucket,” said the other man. “She’s been at it pretty well all night, sir.” “Well, that’s true,” he returned. “My light’s burnt out. Show yours a moment.” All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked. The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in, leaving us standing in the street.
“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “if without obtruding myself on your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so.” “You are truly kind,” I answered. “I need wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if I keep any, it is another’s.” “I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as I can fully respect it.” “I trust implicitly to you,” I said. “I know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise.” After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr. Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. “Please to come in, Miss Summerson,” he said, “and sit down by the fire. Mr. Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want. It’s not in her box, and I think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to handle without hurting.” We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke meekly. “Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket,” said he. “The lady will excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The back is Guster’s bedroom, and in it she’s a-carrying on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!” We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs. Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face. “My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, “to wave— not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear—hostilities for one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady.” She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and looked particularly hard at me. “My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, “it is not unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, at the present hour. I don’t know. I have not the least idea. If I was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I’d rather not be told.” He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr. Bucket took the matter on himself. “Now, Mr. Snagsby,” said he, “the best thing you can do is to go along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster—” “My Guster, Mr. Bucket!” cried Mr. Snagsby. “Go on, sir, go on. I shall be charged with that next.” “And to hold the candle,” pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting himself, “or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you’re asked. Which there’s not a man alive more ready to do, for you’re a man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you’ve got the sort of heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me have it as soon as ever you can?” As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender, talking all the time. “Don’t you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she’s under a mistake altogether. She’ll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I’m a-going to explain it to her.” Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs. Snagsby. “Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman possessing what you may call charms, you know—‘Believe Me, if All Those Endearing,’ and cetrer—you’re well acquainted with the song, because it’s in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are strangers—charms—attractions, mind you, that ought to give you confidence in yourself—is, that you’ve done it.” Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered, what did Mr. Bucket mean. “What does Mr. Bucket mean?” he repeated, and I saw by his face that all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it must be; “I’ll tell you what he means, ma’am. Go and see Othello acted. That’s the tragedy for you.” Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why. “Why?” said Mr. Bucket. “Because you’ll come to that if you don’t look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your mind’s not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you’re what I call an intellectual woman—with your soul too large for your body, if you come to that, and chafing it—and you know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don’t you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady.” Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the time. “And Toughey—him as you call Jo—was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than your great grand-father, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)” Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes. “Is that all?” said Mr. Bucket excitedly. “No. See what hap-pens. Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch ’em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant—knowing what she’s subject to and what a little thing will bring ’em on—in that surprising manner and with that severity that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl’s words!”
He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr. Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again. “Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make,” said Mr. Bucket, rapidly glancing at it, “is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one thing that’s likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest and best!” In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door. “Now my dear, you’re steady and quite sure of yourself?” “Quite,” said I. “Whose writing is that?” It was my mother’s. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed to me at my guardian’s. “You know the hand,” he said, “and if you are firm enough to read it to me, do! But be particular to a word.” It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what follows: “I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the dear one, if I could, once more—but only to see her—not to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me, she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the dear one’s good. You re-member her dead child. The men’s consent I bought, but her help was freely given.” “‘I came.’ That was written,” said my companion, “when she rested there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right.” The next was written at another time: “I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was right that all that had sustained me should give way at once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.”
“Take courage,” said Mr. Bucket. “There’s only a few words more.” Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost in the dark: “I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.” Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my chair. “Cheer up! Don’t think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.” I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed. The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us. The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down. They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into tears. “My poor girl,” said I, laying my face against her forehead, for indeed I was crying too, and trembling, “it seems cruel to trouble you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter than I could tell you in an hour.” She began piteously declaring that she didn’t mean any harm, she didn’t mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
“We are all sure of that,” said I. “But pray tell me how you got it.” “Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I’ll tell true, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby.” “I am sure of that,” said I. “And how was it?” “I had been out on an errand, dear lady—long after it was dark— quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here. And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here, but had lost her way and couldn’t find them. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! They won’t believe me! She didn’t say any harm to me, and I didn’t say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!” It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her—which she did, I must say, with a good deal of contrition—before she could be got beyond this. “She could not find those places,” said I. “No!” cried the girl, shaking her head. “No! Couldn’t find them. And she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you’d have given her half a crown, I know!” “Well, Guster, my girl,” said he, at first not knowing what to say. “I hope I should.” “And yet she was so well spoken,” said the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes, “that it made a person’s heart bleed. And so she said to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I told her I had been a poor child my-self, and it was according to parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.” As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket received this with a look which I could not separate from one of alarm. “Oh, dear, dear!” cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her hands. “What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff—that you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby—that frightened me so, Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!” “You are so much better now,” sald I. “Pray, pray tell me more.” “Yes I will, yes I will! But don’t be angry with me, that’s a dear lady, because I have been so ill.” Angry with her, poor soul! “There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no—no harm. And so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and went.” “And did she go—” “Yes,” cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. “Yes! She went the way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened.” Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I said, “Don’t leave me now!” and Mr. Bucket added, “You’ll be better with us, we may want you; don’t lose time!” I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real. At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground —a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying—Jenny, the mother of the dead child. I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt en-treated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, be-fore I went up to the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure. “Miss Summerson, you’ll understand me, if you think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage.” They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no meaning to them in any other connexion. “And one returned,” said Mr. Bucket, “and one went on. And the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!” I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother’s letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt’s face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone. I even heard it said between them, “Shall she go?” “She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours.” I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead.
Chapter 60
Chapter 60
Perspective I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved. I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains, that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy. I proceed to other passages of my narrative. During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs. Woodcourt had come, on my guardian’s invitation, to stay with us. When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him in our old way—though I could have done that sooner if he would have believed me—I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had appointed the time him-self, and we were alone. “Dame Trot,” said he, receiving me with a kiss, “welcome to the growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer time—as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short.” “And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?” said I. “Aye, my dear? Bleak House,” he returned, “must learn to take care of itself.” I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile. “Bleak House,” he repeated—and his tone did not sound sorrowful, I found—“must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada, my dear, and Ada stands much in need of you.” “It’s like you, guardian,” said I, “to have been taking that into consideration for a happy surprise to both of us.”
“Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of her alone, but of him too, poor fellow.” “Have you seen Mr. Woodcourt, this morning, guardian?” “I see Mr. Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden.” “Does he still say the same of Richard?” “Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about him; who can be?” My dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it had ever been, and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house. My guardian’s delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to convey to her that he thought she was right. “Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard,” said I. “When will he awake from his delusion!” “He is not in the way to do so now, my dear,” replied my guardian. “The more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made me the principal representative of the great occasion of his suffering.” I could not help adding, “So unreasonably!” “Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot,” returned my guardian, “what shall we find reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end—if it ever has an end—how should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older men did in old times.” His gentleness and consideration for Richard whenever we spoke of him touched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon.
“I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors,” pursued my guardian. “When those learned gentle-men begin to raise moss-roses from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be astonished too!” He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead. “Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada upon it. She cannot afford, and he can-not afford, the remotest chance of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month, next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can wait.” But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I thought, had Mr. Woodcourt. “So he tells me,” returned my guardian. “Very good. He has made his protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to be said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Wood-court. How do you like her, my dear?” In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be. “I think so too,” said my guardian. “Less pedigree? Not so much of Morgan ap—what’s his name?” That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless person, even when we had had more of him. “Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains,” said my guardian. “I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better for a time than retain Mrs. Woodcourt here?” No. And yet— My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say. I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
“You see,” said my guardian, “our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt’s way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you.” Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think! “It is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do better.” “Sure, little woman?” Quite sure. I had had a moment’s time to think, since I had urged that duty on myself, and I was quite sure. “Good,” said my guardian. “It shall be done. Carried unanimously.” “Carried unanimously,” I repeated, going on with my work. It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting. It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never resumed. I showed it to him now, and he ad-mired it highly. After I had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were to come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme. “You said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Woodcourt before Ada left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another country. Have you been advising him since?” “Yes, little woman, pretty often.” “Has he decided to do so?” “I rather think not.” “Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?” said I. “Why—yes—perhaps,” returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a very deliberate manner. “About half a year hence or so, there is a medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated—streams and streets, town and country, mill and moor—and seems to present an opening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men’s sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for. It is Woodcourt’s kind.” “And will he get this appointment?” I asked. “Why, little woman,” returned my guardian, smiling, “not being an oracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will gather about it, it may be fairly hoped.” “The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it falls on Mr. Woodcourt, guardian.” “You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will.” We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered. I now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bon-net and bustled off to Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming in (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of becoming trouble-some just yet. On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Vholes’s office. Sometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and biting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln’s Inn, near the place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how different! That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I used to see burning after dark in Mr. Vholes’s office I knew very well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in debt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was meant by Mr. Vholes’s shoulder being at the wheel—as I still heard it was. My dear made the best of house-keepers and tried hard to save, but I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day. She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that I half believed she was blinded by her love for Richard to his ruinous career. I went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression. As I turned into Symond’s Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out. She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from that ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday at five o’clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule of documents on her arm. “My dear!” she began. “So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see you. And you are going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? To be sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see you.” “Then Richard is not come in yet?” said I. “I am glad of that, for I was afraid of being a little late.” “No, he is not come in,” returned Miss Flite. “He has had a long day in court. I left him there with Vholes. You don’t like Vholes, I hope? Don’t like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!” “I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now,” said I. “My dearest,” returned Miss Flite, “daily and hourly. You know what I told you of the attraction on the Chancellor’s table? My dear, next to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?” It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was no surprise. “In short, my valued friend,” pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, “I must tell you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted, and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es.” “Indeed?” said I.
“Ye-es,” repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, “my executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.) I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance.” It made me sigh to think of him. “I did at one time mean,” said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, “to nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor man, so I have appointed his successor. Don’t mention it. This is in confidence.” She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke. “Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds.” “Really, Miss Flite?” said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her confidence received with an appearance of interest. She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy. “Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!” The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, quite chilled me. This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner. Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window where I was sitting and began upon Symond’s Inn. “A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official one,” said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to make it clearer for me.
“There is not much to see here,” said I. “Nor to hear, miss,” returned Mr. Vholes. “A little music does occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish him?” I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well. “I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his friends myself,” said Mr. Vholes, “and I am aware that the gentlemen of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?” “He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious.” “Just so,” said Mr. Vholes. He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there were not a human passion or emotion in his nature. “Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?” he resumed. “Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend,” I answered. “But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance.” “That can do little for an unhappy mind,” said I. “Just so,” said Mr. Vholes. So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were something of the vampire in him. “Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in black kid or out of it, “this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr. C.’s.” I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When Richard had not yielded him-self to the unhappy influence which now darkened his life. “Just so,” assented Mr. Vholes again. “Still, with a view to everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission, Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very ill- advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.’s connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself, but also to my own reputation—dear to myself as a professional man aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support.” “It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes,” said I, “if Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which you are engaged with him.” Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough—or rather gasp—into one of his black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even that. “Miss Summerson,” he said, “it may be so; and I freely admit that the young lady who has taken Mr. C.’s name upon herself in so ill- advised a manner—you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.’s connexions—is a highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much with general society in any but a professional character; still I trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.’s pursuit of his interests—” “Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!” “Pardon me,” returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward and dispassionate manner. “Mr. C. takes certain interests under certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference to Mr. C,’s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my desire that everything should he openly carried on—I used those words, for I happened after-wards to note them in my diary, which is producible at any time—I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I have carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over to any connexion of Mr. C.’s on any account. As open as I was to Mr. Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say, unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.’s affairs in a very bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I regard this as an exceedingly ill- advised marriage. Am I here, sir? Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to thank you very much, sir!” He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes’s scrupulous way of saving himself and his respect-ability not to feel that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client’s progress. We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard, anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host’s face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard’s youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away. He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed him-self to be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful. Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his office. “Always devoted to business, Vholes!” cried Richard. “Yes, Mr. C.,” he returned, “the interests of clients are never to be neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C. ” Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes. Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and quietly sat down to sing some of Richard’s favourites, the lamp being first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his eyes. I sat between them, at my dear girl’s side, and felt very melancholy listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time, rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr. Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully, half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night; and Richard readily consenting, they went out together. They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side), but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without striking any note. “Esther, my dearest,” she said, breaking silence, “Richard is never so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that.”
I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, be-cause Mr. Woodcourt had come to her cousin John’s house and had known us all there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had always liked him, and—and so forth. “All true,” said Ada, “but that he is such a devoted friend to us we owe to you.” I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her trembling. “Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife indeed. You shall teach me.” I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that it was she who had something to say to me. “When I married Richard I was not insensible to what was before him. I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I understood the danger he was in, dear Esther.” “I know, I know, my darling.” “When we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my sake—as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have married him just the same, Esther. Just the same!” In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still—a firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying away with them—I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones. “You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you see and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely know Richard better than my love does.” She spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand ex-pressed such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear, dear girl! “I see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him, when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this, and this sup-ports me.” I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I now thought I began to know what it was. “And something else supports me, Esther.” She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in motion. “I look forward a little while, and I don’t know what great aid may come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him back.” Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her in mine. “If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look for-ward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him and a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, ‘I thank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and restored through me!’” Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against me! “These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I look at Richard.” I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and weeping, she replied, “That he may not live to see his child.”
