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 manner of lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, “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 understand 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 inquire 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 Woodcourt is. He finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody 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 brightens 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 towards 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 devoted 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 reminded 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 always thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes 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 before! 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 LII
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 sometimes 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. Woodcourt 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 upstairs, 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 gentlemen,” 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 bead 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 Bucket 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 backward. “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 anything 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, increased, and that I was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my being afraid.
We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined us.
There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet’s eyes, and her face was flushed and hurried. “I didn’t let George see what I thought about it, you know, miss,” was her first remark when she came up, “but he’s in a bad way, poor old fellow!”
“Not with care and prudence and good help,” said my guardian.
“A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir,” returned Mrs. Bagnet, hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, “but I am uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep.”
“With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a boy,” Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.
“Now, I tell you, miss,” said Mrs. Bagnet; “and when I say miss, I mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I’ll tell you!”
Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, “Old girl! Tell ’em!”
“Why, then, miss,” the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet for more air, “you could as soon move Dover Castle as move George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with. And I have got it!”
“You are a jewel of a woman,” said my guardian. “Go on!”
“Now, I tell you, miss,” she proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, “that what he says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don’t know of him, but he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to anybody else, and it warn’t for nothing that he once spoke to my Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers’ heads. For fifty pounds he had seen his mother that day. She’s alive and must be brought here straight!”
Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.
“Lignum,” said Mrs. Bagnet, “you take care of the children, old man, and give me the umbrella! I’m away to Lincolnshire to bring that old lady here.”
“But, bless the woman,” cried my guardian with his hand in his pocket, “how is she going? What money has she got?”
Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
“Never you mind for me, miss. I’m a soldier’s wife and accustomed to travel my own way. Lignum, old boy,” kissing him, “one for yourself, three for the children. Now I’m away into Lincolnshire after George’s mother!”
And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
“Mr. Bagnet,” said my guardian. “Do you mean to let her go in that way?”
“Can’t help it,” he returned. “Made her way home once from another quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella. Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says, I’LL do it. She does it.”
“Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks,” rejoined my guardian, “and it is impossible to say more for her.”
“She’s Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion,” said Mr. Bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. “And there’s not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”
CHAPTER LIII
The Track
Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition towards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation–but through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current of forefinger.
Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow–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 person; 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 inconsolable 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 himself, 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 himself 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 damaging 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 tonight, 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 assure 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 deceased 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 become 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 cannot 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 into 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 returning, “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 withdraws, closing the door on Volumnia’s little scream, which is a preliminary to her remarking that that charmingly horrible person 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 sometimes 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 moonlight, 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 LIV
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 agreeable 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 precaution, 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 elbows, 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 suppose 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 intended. 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 person 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 afterwards 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, Baronet, 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 inarticulate 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. Smallweed 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 Smallweed. “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 newspapers, 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 identifles 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 handsome 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 bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, because 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. Chadband 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 express, 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. Chadband, 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.