Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 2 of 4
Go to Part 4 of 4

The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased
even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current
very memorable to me.

As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and
as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble.
Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.

"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"

"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I
can't hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same
time, miss. Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."

I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of
communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and
locked it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was
yet upon the key.

Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest.
Go away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you
presently."  Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl
and I were companions again.

Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her
to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse
her. I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was
necessary that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not
seeing my darling above all. At first she came very often to the
door, and called to me, and even reproached me with sobs and tears;
but I wrote her a long letter saying that she made me anxious and
unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wished my mind to be
at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that she came
beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and
if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were
hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood
behind the window-curtain listening and replying, but not so much
as looking out! How did I learn to love it afterwards, when the
harder time came!

They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door
wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had
vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and
airy. There was not a servant in or about the house but was so
good that they would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of
the day or night without the least fear or unwillingness, but I
thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada
and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution. Through
her means I got out to take the air with my guardian when there was
no fear of meeting Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of
attendance, any more than in any other respect.

And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy
danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day
and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by
such a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding
her head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would
come to her in no other attitude--I silently prayed to our Father
in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little
sister taught me.

I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would
change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a
child with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater
part, lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and
her mind rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and
the little children, she still knew me so far as that she would be
quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur
out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I
used to think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that
the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to
them in their need was dead!

There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,
telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was
sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley
would speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she
could to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried
who was the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the
ruler's daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of
death. And Charley told me that when her father died she had
kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might
be raised up and given back to his poor children, and that if she
should never get better and should die too, she thought it likely
that it might come into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for
her. Then would I show Tom how these people of old days had been
brought back to life on earth, only that we might know our hope to
be restored to heaven!

But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there
was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of.
And there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last
high belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in
God, on the part of her poor despised father.

And Charley did not die. She flutteringiy and slowly turned the
dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to
mend. The hope that never had been given, from the first, of
Charley being in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to
be encouraged; and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into
her old childish likeness again.

It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood
out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at
last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening,
I felt that I was stricken cold.

Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed
again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of
her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I
felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that
I was rapidly following in Charley's steps.

I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to
return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk
with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression
that I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little
beside myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at
times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too
large altogether.

In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare
Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,
Charley, are you not?'

"Oh, quite!" said Charley.

"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"

"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's
face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in
MY face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my
bosom, and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a
great deal more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.

"Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,
"if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you.
And unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were
for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley."

"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "Oh,
my dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a little longer. Oh,
my dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as
she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--"I'll be
good."

So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.

"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. "I
am listening to everything you say."

"It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor
to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to
nurse me."

For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "And in
the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not
be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go,
Charley, and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and
am asleep. At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley,
and let no one come."

Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the
doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask
relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet.
I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into
day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on
the first morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.

On the second morning I heard her dear voice--Oh, how dear now!--
outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being
painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer
softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!"

"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.

"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.

"But I know she is very beautiful this morning."

"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking
up at the window."

With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when
raised like that!

I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.

"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her
way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to
the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon
me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die."

"I never will! I never will!" she promised me.

"I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for
a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,
Charley; I am blind."

CHAPTER XXXII

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the
shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and
fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled
down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at
nine o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the
gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty
power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase
windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of
their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they
may give, for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons,
engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek,
have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for
some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the
confusion of passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now
exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they
still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook
and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in
liquor," and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as
usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something
to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where
the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows jingles
out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the
lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard
taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally
adjuring his friends and patrons to "Listen, listen, listen, tew
the wa-ter fall!"  Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on
the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists
at the Harmonic Meetings and who has a space to herself in the
manuscript announcement in the window, Mrs. Perkins possessing
information that she has been married a year and a half, though
announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her
baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every night to
receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. "Sooner
than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my living by
selling lucifers."  Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same
opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication,
Mrs. Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the
Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper
accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good
night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever
since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before
he was sent to bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-
shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and
shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating
retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at
doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to
administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either
robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and
there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine
steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome
trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and
give the registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be
something in the air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something
in himself that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is
very ill at ease. He comes and goes between his own room and the
open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever
since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which
he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and
down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head,
making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than
before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of
the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he
is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby
haunts what seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop
in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even
now, coming round by the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing
down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so
terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes'
long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are
YOU there?"

"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."

"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the
stationer inquires.

"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is
not very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the
court.

"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're
rather greasy here, sir?"

"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour
in the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops
at the Sol's Arms."

"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?"  Mr. Snagsby sniffs and
tastes again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their
cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been
burning 'em, sir! And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and
tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--
not to put too fine a point upon it--that they were quite fresh
when they were shown the gridiron."

"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."

"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find
it sinking to the spirits."

"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby,
looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and
then falling back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live
in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and
worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come
to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's
very true that you didn't see, in your room, what I saw there.
That makes a difference."

"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.

"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his
cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to
consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."

"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."

"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
"Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but
the law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby
with his apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the
profession I get my living by."

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at
the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward
for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly
seeing his way out of this conversation.

"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
"that he should have been--"

"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.

"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
the button.

"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
the subject. "I thought we had done with him."

"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle,
"because I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses
and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable,
sir," adds Mr. Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved
the matter.

"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
glancing up and down the court.

"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.

"There does."

"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough.
"Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid
I must bid you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him
desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of
escape ever since he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be
looking for me else. Good night, sir!"

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped
over her head, honourmg Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
glance as she goes past.

"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever
you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
coming!"

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up
his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street
door. Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy
(for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the
back room, they speak low.

"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming
here," says Tony.

"Why, I said about ten."

"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about
ten. But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred
o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"

"What has been the matter?"

"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here
have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have
had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-
looking candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper
on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the
snuffers in hand.

"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has
been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."

"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy,
looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on
the table.

"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I
suppose."  Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him
with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the
fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly
tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an
easy attitude.

"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"

"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
construction of his sentence.

"On business?"

"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to
prose."

"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."

"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going
to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round
the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his
survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in
which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the
terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase,
and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the
prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
likeness."

"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack
and remonstrates with him.

"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are
bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question,
and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner
on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."

"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
when I use it."

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got
the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more
injured remonstrance.

"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in
those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony,
possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and
allure the taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may
wish that I could say the same--it is not your character to hover
around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy
pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am
sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!"

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued,
saying emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!"  Mr. Guppy
acquiesces, with the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony,
of my own accord."

"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"

"Very. What did he do it for?"

"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."

"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"

"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw
him to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he
had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and
showed 'em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his
cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over
before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards, through
the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows--
about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or
something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat
asleep in his hole."

"And you are to go down at twelve?"

"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
hundred."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"

"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately,
and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got
on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too
old to acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"

"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he
has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by
eye alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a
letter, and asked me what it meant."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
"should you say that the original was a man's writing or a
woman's?"

"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end
of the letter 'n,' long and hasty."

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As
he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve.
It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
there a chimney on fire?"

"Chimney on fire!"

"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here,
on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it
won't blow off--smears like black fat!"

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and
a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and
says it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately
made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.

"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with
remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their
conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the
table, with their heads very near together, "that he told you of
his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's
portmanteau?"

"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually
assumed by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he
abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his
shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.

"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
his thumb-nail.

"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."

"I tell you what, Tony--"

"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.

"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real
one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."

"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
than not," suggests Tony.

"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal
friend of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be
producible, won't they?"

"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.

"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't
doubt William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"

"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
other gravely.

"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a
little; but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you
can't speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at
all, forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"

"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
secrecy, a pair of conspirators."

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for
it's the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"

"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be
profitable, after all."

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over
the mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to
the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve
that friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not
be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your
friend is no fool. What's that?"

"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen
and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various
than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the
rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread
of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the
winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the
air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their
shoulders by one consent to see that the door is shut.

"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"

"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."

"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."

"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see
how YOU like it."

"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
"there have been dead men in most rooms."

"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and
they let you alone," Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark
to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that
he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by
stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart
had been stirred instead.

"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he.
"Let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too
close."

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and
looking up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the
rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is
of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy,
noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whisperirig in
quite a light-comedy tone.

"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger
of that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That
grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."

"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."

"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he
really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has
boasted to you, since you have been such allies?"

Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get
through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be
better informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them,
when he don't know himself? He is always spelling out words from
them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and
asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from
beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for
anything I can say. It's a monomania with him to think he is
possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them
this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells
me."

"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought,
where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his
shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that
they are worth something."

"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he
may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS
got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court
and hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.

Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and
balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues
thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand,
until he hastily draws his hand away.

"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my
fingers!"

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the
touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant,
sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them
both shudder.

"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
window?"

"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have
been here!" cries the lodger.

And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here,
from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the
window. "Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is
quiet again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last.
Shall I go?"

Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before
the fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or
two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.

"Have you got them?"

"Got them! No. The old man's not there."

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
"What's the matter?"

"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the
oil is there--and he is not there!"  Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat
has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at
something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little
fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating
vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and
ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent
from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back hang the old
man's hairy cap and coat.

"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to
these objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw
him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old
letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there
already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the
shutters up--and I left him turning the letters over in his hand,
standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor."

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
fall."

"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"

"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up
the light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty
will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that
court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all
lord chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places
under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where
injustice is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will,
attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented
how you will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred,
engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and
that only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths
that can be died.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Interlopers

Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and
buttons who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms
reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in
fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle),
and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the
Sol's parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper.
Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the
neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight,
thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by
the following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set
forth how it will doubtless be remembered that some time back a
painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case of
mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the
house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by
an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in
life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was
examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected was held on
that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a well-conducted tavern
immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side and
licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. James George Bogsby.
Now do they show (in as many words as possible) how during some
hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by
the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical occurrence
which forms the subject of that present account transpired; and
which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr. Swills, a comic
vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, has himself
stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a
lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by
Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called Harmonic
Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the
Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of
George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously
affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose
expression at the time being that he was like an empty post-office,
for he hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills
is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females
residing in the same court and known respectively by the names of
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid
effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in
the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a
great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an amicable
partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot;
and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm
up the shutters of the Sol's Arms parlour, to behold the tops of
their heads while they are about it.

The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,
and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill-
fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued
from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a
bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts
its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good
for the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The
house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy
heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to
his shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!"  In the first
outcry, young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in
triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and
holding on to that fabulous creature with all his might in the
midst of helmets and torches. One helmet remains behind after
careful investigation of all chinks and crannies and slowly paces
up and down before the house in company with one of the two
policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. To this
trio everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate
desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form.

Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol
and are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they
will only stay there. "This is not a time, says Mr. Bogsby, "to
haggle about money," though he looks something sharply after it,
over the counter; "give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're
welcome to whatever you put a name to."

Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names
to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to
put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate
to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it,
and of what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw.
Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen often flits about the
door, and pushing it open a little way at the full length of his
arm, looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions,
but that he may as well know what they are up to in there.

Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out
of bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being
treated, still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had
a little money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with
slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his
rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the
little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness.
Thus the day cometh, whether or no.

And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the
court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have
fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard
floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the
very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood,
waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes
streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen
and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the
court) have enough to do to keep the door.

"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's
this I hear!"

"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it
is. Now move on here, come!"

"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat
promptly backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten
and eleven o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges
here."

"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next
door then. Now move on here, some of you,"

"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.

"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"

Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his
troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle
languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on
him of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.

"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear!
What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit--"

Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the
words "my little woman."  For to see that injured female walk into
the Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the
beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,
strikes him dumb.

"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you
take anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop
of shrub?"

"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.

"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"

"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their
presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.

The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.
Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.

"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do
it."

"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I
wouldn't."

Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you
really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble
and says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully
disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.

"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful
mystery."

"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't
for goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look
at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do
it. Good Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously
combusting any person, my dear?"

"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.

On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't
say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may
have had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't
know what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious
that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it,
in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his
handkerchief and gasps.

"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any
objections to mention why, being in general so delicately
circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before
breakfast?"

"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.

"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has
happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted."  Mr.
Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have
related them to you, my love, over your French roll."

"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."

"Every--my lit--"

"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his
increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would
come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby,
than anywhere else."

"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to
go."

Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.
Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction
with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby
from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be
responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is
the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into
certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His
mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas
of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if
innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into
Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as
many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.

"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says
Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the
square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we
must, with very little delay, come to an understanding."

"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his
companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy,
you needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of
that, and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking
fire next or blowing up with a bang."

This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy
that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should
have thought that what we went through last night would have been a
lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived."  
To which Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it
would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long
as you lived."  To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?"  To
which Mr. Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!"  To which Mr. Guppy
retorts, "No, I am not."  To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes,
you are!"  To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?"  To which Mr.
Jobling retorts, "I say so!"  To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh,
indeed?"  To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!"  And both
being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to
cool down again.

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead
of flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper
is hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself,
Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye--"

"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what
you have got to say!"

Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy
only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of
injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point
on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so
quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You
know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are
tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not
desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the
inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?"  
(Mr. Guppy was going to say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better
suited to the circumstances.)

"What facts? THE facts."

"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells
them off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw
him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made,
and how we made it."

"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."

"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his
eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night,
when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done
before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the
evening with you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being
only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased,
it's not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll
agree?"

"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."

"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.

"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I
withdraw the observation."

"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him
slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you
have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to
live at that place?"

"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.

"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him
on again.

"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag
and bottle shop.

Mr. Guppy nods.

"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration
that you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.

"Do you mean it though, Tony?"

"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know
that," says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.

"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be
considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those
effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no
relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find
out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at
all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.

"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?"
cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."

"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived
there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got
one."

"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may
make yourself at home in it."

"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up
the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"

"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness,
"said a truer word in all your life. I do!"

While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the
square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself
manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so
manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two
friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the
venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their
granddaughter Judy.

An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall
hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed
the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How
de do, sir! How de do!"

"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the
morning, I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.

"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a
favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry
me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister
bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good
turn, sir?"

Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The public-
house in the court?"  And they prepare to bear the venerable burden
to the Sol's Arms.

"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a
fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a
penny more, and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear
young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you
round the neck. I won't squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh,
Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!"

It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an
apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished.
With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the
utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed
respiration, he fulils his share of the porterage and the
benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the
parlour of the Sol's Arms.

"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless,
from an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my
aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling,
scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!"

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a
propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds
herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects,
accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance.
A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these
demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but
on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in
connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr.
Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her
grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile
bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of
"a pig-headed jackdaw," repeated a surprising number of times.

"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.
Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it,
either of you?"

"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."

"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered
it!"

The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the
compliment.

"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both
his hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the
melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's
brother."

"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.

"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We
were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD
be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very
eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely)
I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to
look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be
protected. I have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed,
hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to
look after the property."

"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have
mentioned that the old man was your uncle."

"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me
to be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening
eye. "Besides, I wasn't proud of him."

"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or
not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.

"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't
know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"

"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the
old gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the
property--to look over the papers, and to look after the property.
We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor.
Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so
good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS
feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she
had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs.
Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-
beetle, that was seventy-six years of age."

Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,
"Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventysix thousand bags
of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-
notes!"

"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated
husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within
his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will
somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You
hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!"  Here Mr. Smallweed,
wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually
throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by
butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can
muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.

"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll he so good," says the voice from
within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed.
"I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in
the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the
property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the
property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall
touch the property!"  As his dutiful grandchildren set him up,
panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of
shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The--the
property! The property! Property!"

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited
countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.
But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed
interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew
in the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is
answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that
the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due
time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to
assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into
the next house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where
he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.

The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court
still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if
there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought
to be made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins,
as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of
the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the
pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and
hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M.
Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons,
feeling that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between
professionals and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The
popular song of King Death, with chorus by the whole strength of
the company," as the great Harmonic feature of the week and
announces in the bill that "J. G. B. is induced to do so at a
considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has been
very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable
individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has
aroused so much sensation."  There is one point connected with the
deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that
the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though
there is so little to put in it. Upon the undertaker's stating in
the Sol's bar in the course of the day that he has received orders
to construct "a six-footer," the general solicitude is much
relieved, and it is considered that Mr. Smallweed's conduct does
him great honour.

Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable
excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and
carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same
intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and
phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of
these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that
the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and
being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the
evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the
Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on
English medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of
the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one
Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so
and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of
reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and
Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject;
and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a
rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the
unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even
to write an account of it--still they regard the late Mr. Krook's
obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as wholly
unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court
understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms.
Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a
foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the
Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester,
and in Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and
there throws in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life;
in fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it.
Similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal
chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long
by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed.
All this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of
every house and assist at the philosophical disputations--go
everywhere and listen to everybody--and yet are always diving into
the Sol's parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the
tissue-paper.

At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except
that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way
and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that
"that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a
destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are
mysteries we can't account for!"  After which the six-footer comes
into action and is much admired.

In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except
when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private
individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside,
where he has the mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking
the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But
before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the
night next after the catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that
must be said to Lady Dedlock.

For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense
of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's
Arms have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents
himself at the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening
and requests to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is
going out to dinner; don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes,
he does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my Lady
too.

Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow-
gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his
instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the
young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young
man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.

Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering
everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost,
but fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.

"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very
downcast. "This is an inconvenient time--"

"I told you, you could come at any time."  She takes a chair,
looking straight at him as on the last occasion.

"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."

"You can sit down."  There is not much affability in her tone.

"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down
and detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I
mentioned when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."

"Have you come merely to say so?"

"Merely to say so, your ladyship."  Mr. Guppy besides being
depressed, disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further
disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance.

She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss
a grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily
and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the
least perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts,
but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further
and further from her.

She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.

"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent
thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a
sudden end, and--"  He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the
sentence.

"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"

Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.

"I believe so, your ladyship."

If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No,
he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not
utterly put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about
it.

He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.

"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard
him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.

Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.

"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me,
this being the last time you will have the opportunity."

Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at
present, by any means.

"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to
you!"  And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name
of Guppy out.

But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old
man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his
quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young
man as he is leaving the room.

One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the
blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp,
looks out. Another instant, close again.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand
times. It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I
supposed the room was empty. I beg your pardon!"

"Stay!"  She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I
am going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young
man!"

The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly
hopes that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.

"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent
brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge
and Carboy's, surely?"

"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."

"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"

"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit
of the profession."

"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"

Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-
fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down
the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and
rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A Turn of the Screw

"Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge
or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?"

An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it
seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length,
brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his
left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on
that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot
satisfy himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy
palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a
halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye.
Even that won't do. "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank
cartridge or ball?"

Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in
the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march
time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back
again to the girl he left behind him.

"Phil!"  The trooper beckons as he calls him.

Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he
were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander
like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high
relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the
handle of the brush.

"Attention, Phil! Listen to this."

"Steady, commander, steady."

"'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity
for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months'
date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted,
for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence,
will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take
up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.'  What do
you make of that, Phil?"

"Mischief, guv'ner."

"Why?"

"I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle
in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious
consequences is always meant when money's asked for."

"Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and
last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal
in interest and one thing and another."

Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very
unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the
transaction as being made more promising by this incident.

"And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature
conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an
understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And
it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?"

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

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

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

"The same."

"Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his
dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in
his twistings, and a lobster in his claws."

Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after
waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of
him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he
has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical
medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady.
George, having folded the letter, walks in that direction.

"There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him,
"of settling this."

"Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could."

Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There
IS a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush;
"what I'm a-doing at present."

"Whitewashing."

Phil nods.

"A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the
Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off
my old scores? YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing
him in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you
are, Phil!"

Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting
earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush
and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,
that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so
much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy
family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a
cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil,
with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner,
Mrs. Bagnet! Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by
Mr. Bagnet, appears.

The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the
year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very
clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so
interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe
from another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and
an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a
part of the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no colour
known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle,
with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a
little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval
glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has
not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be
desired in an article long associated with the British army. The
old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be
in need of stays--an appearance that is possibly referable to its
having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and
on journeys as a carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the
greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood,
but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out
joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the
attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-
basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she
never stirs abroad. Attended by these her trusty companions,
therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough
straw bonnet, Mrs. Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright,
in George's Shooting Gallery.

"Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this
sunshiny morning?"

Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long
breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a
faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such
positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough
bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses
her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable.

Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade
and with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured
nod and smile.

"Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and
myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on
account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old
regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in
compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his
physiognomy--"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as
usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George,
and he'll sign it like a man."

"I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper
reluctantly.

"Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out
early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and
came to you instead--as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close
now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But
what's the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her
cheerful talk. "You don't look yourself."

"I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little
put out, Mrs. Bagnet."

Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding
up her forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about
that security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the
children!"

The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.

"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and
occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you
have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's,
and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger
of being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain
as print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us
cruelly. I tell you, cruelly, George. There!"

Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts
his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it
from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.

"George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you! George, I am
ashamed of you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have
done it! I always knew you to be a rolling sone that gathered no
moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little
moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know
what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec
and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or
could, have had the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!"  Mrs.
Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine
manner, "How could you do it?"

Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as
if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr.
George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the
grey cloak and straw bonnet.

"Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but
still looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to
heart, because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I
certainly have, this morning, received this letter"--which he reads
aloud--"but I hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone,
why, what you say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never
rolled in anybody's way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least
good to. But it's impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like
your wife and family better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust
you'll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've
kept anything from you. I haven't had the letter more than a
quarter of an hour."

"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you
tell him my opinion?"

"Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and
half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he
wouldn't have got himself into these troubles."

"The old girl," says Mr. Baguet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?"

"Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the
trooper. "Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to
Joe Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about
me. It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off
every morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in
nearly the sum wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe
that I'll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself
first. I only wish," says the trooper, giving himself a
disparaging blow in the chest, "that I knew of any one who'd buy
such a second-hand piece of old stores."

"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."

"George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on
full consideration, except for ever taking this business without
the means."

"And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his
head. "Like me, I know."

"Silence! The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct--in her way
of giving my opinions--hear me out!"

"That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,
George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things
considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an
honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your
power, though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can't admit
but what it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging
over our heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come!
Forget and forgive all round!"

Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her
husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and
holds them while he speaks.

"I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge
this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together
has gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly
enough here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was
expected of it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. It was
wrong in me to take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner
drawn into that step, and I thought it might steady me, and set me
up, and you'll try to overlook my having such expectations, and
upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed
of myself."  With these concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake
to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace
or two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a
final confession and were immediately going to be shot with all
military honours.

"George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old
girl, go on!"

Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to
observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that
it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.
Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and
hold harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George,
entirely assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr.
Bagnet to the enemy's camp.

"Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet,
patting him on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I
am sure you'll bring him through it."

The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring
Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,
basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of
her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of
mollifying Mr. Smallweed.

Whether there are two people in England less likely to come
satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.
George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.
Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square
shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same
limits two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the
Smallweedy affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity
through the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr.
Bagnet, observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a
friendly part to refer to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally.

"George, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk.
But touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like
gunpowder."

"It does her credit, Mat!"

"George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old
girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit. More or less.
I never say so. Discipline must he maintained."

"She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper.

"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's
weight--is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight--in any
metal--for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's
metal is far more precious---than the preciousest metal. And she's
ALL metal!"

"You are right, Mat!"

"When she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me
and the children--heart and head, for life. She's that earnest,"
says Mr. Bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a
finger--and she turns out--and stands to her arms. If the old girl
fires wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it,
George. For she's loyal!"

"Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of
her for it!"

"You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm,
though without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as
high of the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and still you'll be
thinking low--of such merits. But I never own to it before her.
Discipline must be maintained."

These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather
Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,
having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but
indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she
consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be
inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning
with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want
to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with
his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath
and Mrs. Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is
not to sing.

"My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean
affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do?
Who is our friend, my dear friend?"

"Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at
first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of
ours, you know."

"Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!"  The old man looks at him under his
hand.

"Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military
air, sir!"

No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet
and one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no
power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.

"Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe."

"Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman
need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not
inclined to smoke it to-day."

"Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe."

"The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself
in rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that
your friend in the city has been playing tricks."

"Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!"

"Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might
be HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter."

Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of
the letter.

"What does it mean?" asks Mr. George.

"Judy," says the old man. "Have you got the pipe? Give it to me.
Did you say what does it mean, my good friend?"

"Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the
trooper, constraining himself to speak as smoothly and
confidentially as he can, holding the open letter in one hand and
resting the broad knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot
of money has passed between us, and we are face to face at the
present moment, and are both well aware of the understanding there
has always been. I am prepared to do the usual thing which I have
done regularly and to keep this matter going. I never got a letter
like this from you before, and I have been a little put about by it
this morning, because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you
know, had none of the money--"

"I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly.

"Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell you so, don't I?"

"Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I
don't know it."

"Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it."

Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! That's quite
another thing!"  And adds, "But it don't matter. Mr. Bagnet's
situation is all one, whether or no."

The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair
comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his
own terms.

"That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's
Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see,
that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for
whereas I'm a harurn-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more
kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he's a steady family man,
don't you see? Now, Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining
confidence as he proceeds in his soldierly mode of doing business,
"although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of a
way, I am well aware that I can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet
off entirely."

"Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr.
George."  (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather
Smallweed to-day.)

"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as
your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard
manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's
natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that
venerable man.

"Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be
pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my
friend Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot,
if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my
friend Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll
just mention to him what our understanding is."

Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good
gracious! Oh!"  Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is
found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose
chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and
contempt. Mr. Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.

"But I think you asked me, Mr. George"--old Smallweed, who all this
time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"I think you
asked me, what did the letter mean?"

"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I
don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."

Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's
head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.

"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll
crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"

The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity
has now attained its profoundest point.

"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your
pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent
dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been
there before) and show your independeuce now, will you? Come, my
dear friend, there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy;
put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em
out!"

He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on
the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his
amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is
instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.
George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a
perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little
parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes,
apparently revolving something in his mind.

"Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we
must try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?"

Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,
replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my
old girl had been here--I'd have told him!"  Having so discharged
himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and
marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.

When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr.
Tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all
willing to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the
clerk, on his bell being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning
as much, he brings forth no more encouraging message than that Mr.
Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them and they had better not
wait. They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military
tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in
possession comes out of Mr. Tulkinghorn's room.

The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,
housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a
fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is
treated with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his
pew to show her through the outer office and to let her out. The
old lady is thanking him for his attention when she observes the
comrades in waiting.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"

The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr.
George not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr.
Bagnet takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly."

"I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at
the sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless
you, gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once
who went for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in
his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor
mother. I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you,
gentlemen!"

"Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.

There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old
lady's voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old
figure. But Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the
fireplace (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he
does not look round until she has gone away and the door is closed
upon her.

"George," Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the
almanac at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why--should
we be melancholy, boys?'  Cheer up, my hearty!"

The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there
and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,
"Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the
painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.

"Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last
time I saw you that I don't desire your company here."

Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his
usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he
has received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and
has been referred there.

"I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. "If you
get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences.
You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"

Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.

"Very well! Then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay
it for you."

Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with
the money either.

"Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be
sued for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must
refund it. You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings,
and pence and escape scot-free."

The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr.
George hopes he will have the goodness to--

"I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don't like
your associates and don't want you here. This matter is not at all
in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is
good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my
way. You must go to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn."

"I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for
pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is
almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let
me say a private word to you?"

Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into
one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste."  In
the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a
sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back
to the light and to have the other with his face towards it.

"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party
implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--
and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my
account. He is a most respectable man with a wife and family,
formerly in the Royal Artillery--"

"My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal
Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,
guns, and ammunition."

"'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife
and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them
through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up
without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other
day."

"Have you got it here?"

"I have got it here, sir."

"Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far
more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence,
"make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After
I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-
open it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days,
what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it
away at once if you choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I
can do this for you--I can replace this matter on its old footing,
and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking
that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you
have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be
exhausted before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all
but freeing him. Have you decided?"

The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long
breath, "I must do it, sir."

So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes
the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who
has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand
on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and
seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express
his sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a
folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's
elbow. "'Tis ouly a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever
had from him."

Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression,
and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr.
Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and
lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.

Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same
frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go.
Show these men out, there!"  Being shown out, they repair to Mr.
Bagnet's residence to dine.

Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former
repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the
meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being
that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms
without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any
little spot of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the
darkened brow of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and
depressed. At first Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments
of Quebec and Malta to restore him, but finding those young ladies
sensible that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their
usual frolicsome acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and
leaves him to deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic
hearth.

But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.
During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and
Mr. Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he
was at dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders,
lets his pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation
and dismay by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.

Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the
invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls,
"Old girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the
matter.

"Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle.
"How low you are!"

"Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not."

"He ain't at all like Blulfy, mother!" cries little Malta.

"Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec.

"Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the
trooper, kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh,
"true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!"

"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross
enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who
could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done
it almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to
you now."

"My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of
it."

"Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was
that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through
it. And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!"

"Thankee, my dear!" says George. "I am glad of your good opinion."

In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly
shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is
attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as
she plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his
stool in the corner, and beckons that fifer to him.

"See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the
mother's hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for
you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the
sun and the weather through following your father about and taking
care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."

Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,
the highest approbation and acquiescence.

"The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair
of your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and
re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take
care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I
never whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful
line in her face!'  For of all the many things that you can think
of when you are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!"

Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy
beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry
about him, that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.

CHAPTER XXXV

Esther's Narrative

I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life
became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of
time so much as of the change in all my habits made by the
helplessness and inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been
confined to it many days, everything else seemed to have retired
into a remote distance where there was little or no separation
between the various stages of my life which had been really divided
by years. In falling ill, I seemed to have crossed a dark lake and
to have left all my experiences, mingled together by the great
distance, on the healthy shore.

My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety
to think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the
oldest of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when
I went home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my
childish shadow at my side, to my godmother's house. I had never
known before how short life really was and into how small a space
the mind could put it.

While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time
became confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly.
At once a child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so
happy as, I was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties
adapted to each station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly
trying to reconcile them. I suppose that few who have not been in
such a condition can quite understand what I mean or what painful
unrest arose from this source.

For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my
disorder--it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both
nights and days in it--when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever
striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm
in a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew
perfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I
was in my bed; and I talked with Charley, and felt her touch, and
knew her very well; yet I would find myself complaining, "Oh, more
of these never-ending stairs, Charley--more and more--piled up to
the sky', I think!" and labouring on again.

Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in
great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry
circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my
only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such
inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?

Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious
and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make
others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering
them. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions
we might be the better able to alleviate their intensity.

The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful
rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for
myself and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying,
with no other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left
behind--this state can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in
this state when I first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me
once more, and knew with a boundless joy for which no words are
rapturous enough that I should see again.

I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard
her calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had
heard her praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort
me and to leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I
could speak, "Never, my sweet girl, never!" and I had over and over
again reminded Charley that she was to keep my darling from the
room whether I lived or died. Charley had been true to me in that
time of need, and with her little hand and her great heart had kept
the door fast.

But now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every
day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my
dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my
lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I
could see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the
two rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to
Ada from the open window again. I could understand the stillness
in the house and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all
those who had always been so good to me. I could weep in the
exquisite felicity of my heart and be as happy in my weakness as
ever I had been in my strength.

By and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with
so strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were
done for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a
little, and so on to a little more and much more, until I became
useful to myself, and interested, and attached to life again.

How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed
with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with
Charley! The little creature--sent into the world, surely, to
minister to the weak and sick--was so happy, and so busy, and
stopped so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom,
and fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was
so glad, that I was obliged to say, "Charley, if you go on in this
way, I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I
thought I was!"  So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her
bright face here and there across and across the two rooms, out of
the shade into the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into
the shade, while I watched her peacefully. When all her
preparations were concluded and the pretty tea-table with its
little delicacies to tempt me, and its white cloth, and its
flowers, and everything so lovingly and beautifully arranged for me
by Ada downstairs, was ready at the bedside, I felt sure I was
steady enough to say something to Charley that was not new to my
thoughts.

First I complimented Charley on the room, and indeed it was so
fresh and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I
had been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face
was brighter than before.

"Yet, Charley," said I, looking round, "I miss something, surely,
that I am accustomed to?"

Poor little Charley looked round too and pretended to shake her
head as if there were nothing absent.

"Are the pictures all as they used to be?" I asked her.

"Every one of them, miss," said Charley.

"And the furniture, Charley?"

"Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss."

"And yet," said I, "I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what
it is, Charley! It's the looking-glass."

Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten
something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.

I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I
could thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called
Charley back, and when she came--at first pretending to smile, but
as she drew nearer to me, looking grieved--I took her in my arms
and said, "It matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do
without my old face very well."

I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great
chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on
Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room
too, but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.

My guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was
now no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He
came one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in
his embrace and say, "My dear, dear girl!"  I had long known--who
could know better?--what a deep fountain of affection and
generosity his heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering
and change to fill such a place in it? "Oh, yes!" I thought. "He
has seen me, and he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and
is even fonder of me than he was before; and what have I to mourn
for!"

He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a
little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he
removed it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been,
there never can be, a pleasanter manner.

"My little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. Such
an inflexible little woman, too, through all!"

"Only for the best, guardian," said I.

"For the best?" he repeated tenderly. "Of course, for the best.
But here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here
has your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here
has every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here
has even poor Rick been writing--to ME too--in his anxiety for
you!"

I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not of Richard. I told
him so.

"Why, no, my dear," he replied. "I have thought it better not to
mention it to her."

"And you speak of his writing to YOU," said I, repeating his
emphasis. "As if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian;
as if he could write to a better friend!"

"He thinks he could, my love," returned my guardian, "and to many a
better. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while
unable to write to you with any hope of an answer--wrote coldly,
haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we
must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and
Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his
eyes. I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If
two angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change
their nature."

"It has not changed yours, guardian."

"Oh, yes, it has, my dear," he said laughingly. "It has made the
south wind easterly, I don't know how often. Rick mistrusts and
suspects me--goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect
me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against
his and what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of
the mountains of wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has
been so long bestowed (which I can't) or could level them by the
extinction of my own original right (which I can't either, and no
human power ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we
got), I would do it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick
his proper nature than be endowed with all the money that dead
suitors, broken, heart and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have
left unclaimed with the Accountant-General--and that's money
enough, my dear, to be cast into a pyramid, in memory of Chancery's
transcendent wickedness."

"IS it possible, guardian," I asked, amazed, "that Richard can be
suspicious of you?"

"Ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of
such abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and
objects lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS
fault."

"But it is a terrible misfortune, guardian."

"It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within
the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By
little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed,
and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything
around him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient
with poor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh
hearts like his have I seen in my time turned by the same means!"

I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that
his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little.

"We must not say so, Dame Durden," he cheerfully rephed; "Ada is
the happier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both
these young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes
and that we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong
for it. But it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was
the curtain of Rick's cradle."

"But, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach
him what a false and wretched thing it is?"

"We WILL hope so, my Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and that it may
not teach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him.
There are not many grown and matured men living while we speak,
good men too, who if they were thrown into this same court as
suitors would not be vitally changed and depreciated within three
years--within two--within one. How can we stand amazed at poor
Rick? A young man so unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone,
as if he were thinking aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?)
that Chancery is what it is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully,
to do something with his interests and bring them to some
settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him;
wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he
still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world
treacherous and hollow. Well, well, well! Enough of this, my
dear!"

He had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness
was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and
loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind
in this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew
strong and try to set him right.

"There are better subjects than these," said my guardian, "for such
a joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. And I had a
commission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk.
When shall Ada come to see you, my love?"

I had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the
absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be
changed by no change in my looks.

"Dear guardian," said I, "as I have shut her out so long--though
indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me--"

"I know it well, Dame Durden, well."

He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and
affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my
heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on.
"Yes, yes, you are tired," said he, "Rest a little."

"As I have kept Ada out so long," I began afresh after a short
while, "I think I should like to have my own way a little longer,
guardian. It would be best to be away from here before I see her.
If Charley and I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I
can move, and if I had a week there in which to grow stronger and
to be revived by the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness
of having Ada with me again, I think it would be better for us."

I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more
used to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I
longed so ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He
understood me, I was sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it
were a poor thing, I knew he would pass it over.

"Our spoilt little woman," said my guardian, "shall have her own
way even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of
tears downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of
chivalry, breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on
paper before, that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he
having already turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by
heaven and by earth he'll pull it down and not leave one brick
standing on another!"

And my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary
beginning such as "My dear Jarndyce," but rushing at once into the
words, "I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take
possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one
o'clock, P.M.," and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the
most emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration
he had quoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for
laughing heartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a
letter of thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most
agreeable one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I
should have liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.

"Now, little housewife," said my guardian, looking at his watch, "I
was strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be
tired too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I
have one other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that
you were ill, made nothing of walking down here--twenty miles, poor
soul, in a pair of dancing shoes--to inquire. It was heaven's
mercy we were at home, or she would have walked back again."

The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!

"Now, pet," said my guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to
admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save
Boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you
would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I--
though my eminent name is Jarndyce--could do in a lifetime."

I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple
image of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle
lesson on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I
could not tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her.
I had always pitied her, never so much as now. I had always been
glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but
never, never, half so glad before.

We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach and
share my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face
away upon my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by
such blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had
to undergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had
aspired to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do
good to some one and win some love to myself if I could came back
into my mind with a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had
since enjoyed and all the affectionate hearts that had been turned
towards me. If I were weak now, what had I profited by those
mercies? I repeated the old childish prayer in its old childish
words and found that its old peace had not departed from it.

My guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk
about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the
window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the
courage to look at the dear face, though I could have done so
easily without her seeing me.

On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature
ran into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying
from her very heart of hearts, "My dear Fitz Jarndyce!" fell upon
my neck and kissed me twenty times.

"Dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "I have
nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a
pocket handkerchief."

Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of
it, for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so,
shedding tears for the next ten minutes.

"With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce," she was careful to explain.
"Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at
having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much
fonder of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend
court regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket
handkerchiefs--"

Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the
place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and looked
unwilling to pursue the suggestion.

"Ve-ry right!" said Miss Flite, "Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly
indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I
am afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think it)
a little--rambling you know," said Miss Flite, touching her
forehead. "Nothing more,"

"What were you going to tell me?" said I, smiling, for I saw she
wanted to go on. "You have roused my curiosity, and now you must
gratify it."

Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis,
who said, "If you please, ma'am, you had better tell then," and
therein gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.

"So sagacious, our young friend," said she to me in her mysterious
way. "Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it's a
pretty anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who
should follow us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor
person in a very ungenteel bonnet--"

"Jenny, if you please, miss," said Charley.

"Just so!" Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity.
"Jenny. Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that
there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my
dear Fitz Jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with her
as a little keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz
Jarndyce's! Now, you know, so very prepossessing in the lady with
the veil!"

"If you please, miss," said Charley, to whom I looked in some
astonishment, "Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a
handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the
baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it
was yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby."

"Diminutive," whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions
about her own forehead to express intellect in Charley. "But ex-
ceedingly sagacious! And so dear! My love, she's clearer than any
counsel I ever heard!"

"Yes, Charley," I returned. "I remember it. Well?"

"Well, miss," said Charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady
took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away
with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and
left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you
please, miss!"

"Why, who can she be?" said I.

"My love," Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with
her most mysterious look, "in MY opinion--don't mention this to our
diminutive friend--she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married,
you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws
his lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the
jeweller!"

I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an
impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was
diverted by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked
hungry and who, our dinner being brought in, required some little
assistance in arraying herself with great satisfaction in a
pitiable old scarf and a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves,
which she had brought down in a paper parcel. I had to preside,
too, over the entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast
fowl, a sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so
pleasant to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and
ceremony she did honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing
else.

When we had finished and had our little dessert before us,
embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the
superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite
was so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her
own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I
began by saying "You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many
years, Miss Flite?"

"Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment.
Shortly."

There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful
if I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would
say no more about it.

"My father expected a judgment," said Miss Flite. "My brother. My
sister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect."

"They are all--"

"Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear," said she.

As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be
serviceable to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.

"Would it not be wiser," said I, "to expect this judgment no more?"

"Why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!"

"And to attend the court no more?"

"Equally of course," said she. "Very wearing to be always in
expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I
assure you, to the bone!"

She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.

"But, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a
dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our
diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With
good reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN'T
leave it. And you MUST expect."

I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently
and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.

"Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-
ry absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing,
too. To the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there
many years, and I have noticed. It's the mace and seal upon the
table."

What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.

"Draw," returned Miss Flite. "Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace
out of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good
qualities out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away
in the night. Cold and glittering devils!"

She tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly
as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to
fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful
secrets to me.

"Let me see," said she. "I'll tell you my own case. Before they
ever drew me--before I had ever seen them--what was it I used to
do? Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister
worked at tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's
business. We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear!
First, our father was drawn--slowly. Home was drawn with him. In
a few years he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind
word or a kind look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz
Jarndyce. He was drawn to a debtors' prison. There he died. Then
our brother was drawn--swiftly--to drunkenness. And rags. And
death. Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then
I was ill and in misery, and heard, as I had often heard before,
that this was all the work of Chancery. When I got better, I went
to look at the monster. And then I found out how it was, and I was
drawn to stay there."

Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which
she had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh
upon her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable
importance.

"You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some
day. I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen
many new faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace
and seal in these many years. As my father's came there. As my
brother's. As my sister's. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge
and the rest of them say to the new faces, 'Here's little Miss
Flite. Oh, you are new here; and you must come and be presented to
little Miss Flite!'  Ve-ry good. Proud I am sure to have the
honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz Jarndyce, I know what will
happen. I know, far better than they do, when the attraction has
begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them begin in Gridley.
And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love," speaking low again,
"I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in Jarndyce. Let some
one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to ruin.

She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face
gradually softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had
been too gloomy, and seeming also to lose the connexion in her
mind, she said politely as she sipped her glass of wine, "Yes, my
dear, as I was saying, I expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall
release my birds, you know, and confer estates."

I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard and by the sad
meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made
its way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was
quite complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.

"But, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it
upon mine. "You have not congratulated me on my physician.
Positively not once, yet!"

I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.

"My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly
attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite
gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that
will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal."

"Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now," said I, "that I thought the
time for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite."

"But, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know
what has happened?"

"No," said I.

"Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!"

"No," said I. "You forget how long I have been here."

"True! My dear, for the moment--true. I blame myself. But my
memory has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I
mentioned. Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear,
there has been a terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian
seas."

"Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!"

"Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death
in all shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and
darkness. Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and
through it all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave
through everything. Saved many lives, never complained in hunger
and thirst, wrapped naked people in his spare clothes, took the
lead, showed them what to do, governed them, tended the sick,
buried the dead, and brought the poor survivors safely off at last!
My dear, the poor emaciated creatures all but worshipped him. They
fell down at his feet when they got to the land and blessed him.
The whole country rings with it. Stay! Where's my bag of
documents? I have got it there, and you shall read it, you shall
read it!"

And I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and
imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see
the words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay
down the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so
triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous
and gallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I
so admired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn
people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their
preserver. I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and
blessed him in my rapture that he should be so truly good and
brave. I felt that no one--mother, sister, wife--could honour him
more than I. I did, indeed!

My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when
as the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest
she should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still
full of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufflciently composed
myself to understand in all its details.

"My dear," said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and
gloves, "my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon
him. And no doubt he will. You are of that opinlon?"

That he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no.

"Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?" she asked rather sharply.

I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men
distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless
occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very
large amount of money.

"Why, good gracious," said Miss Flite, "how can you say that?
Surely you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of
England in knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement
of every sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear,
and consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you
don't know that this is the great reason why titles will always
last in the land!"

I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when
she was very mad indeed.

And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to
keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Woodcourt loved me and
that if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he
loved me before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he
had done so, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it
was now that this had never happened! What should I have suffered
if I had had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had
known as mine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him
from his bondage to one whom he had never seen!

Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully
spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be
all he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be
undone: no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could
go, please God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could
go his nobler way upon its broader road; and though we were apart
upon the journey, I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly,
innocently, better far than he had thought me when I found some
favour in his eyes, at the journey's end.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Chesney Wold

Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into
Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight
of me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn's house, so he accompanied
us, and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of
air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass,
and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful
and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my
first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide
world was so full of delight for me.

My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our
way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a
letter, of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour
of our arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the
early summer-time.

If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,
and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not
have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made
for me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little
tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen
times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than
that, however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley's
delight calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and
Charley had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions,
I was as tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great
comfort to be able to say to myself after tea, "Esther, my dear, I
think you are quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a
note of thanks to your host."  He had left a note of welcome for
me, as sunny as his own face, and had confided his bird to my care,
which I knew to be his highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I
wrote a little note to him in London, telling him how all his
favourite plants and trees were looking, and how the most
astonishing of birds had chirped the honours of the house to me in
the most hospitable manner, and how, after singing on my shoulder,
to the inconceivable rapture of my little maid, he was then at
roost in the usual corner of his cage, but whether dreaming or no I
could not report. My note finished and sent off to the post, I
made myself very busy in unpacking and arranging; and I sent
Charley to bed in good time and told her I should want her no more
that night.

For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have
my own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be
overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh
when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,
and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, "Esther, if you
are to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-
hearted, you must keep your word, my dear."  I was quite resolved
to keep it, but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon
all my blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little
more.

My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more
than once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it
out, and went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a
little muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood
for a moment looking through such a veil of my own hair that I
could see nothing else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the
reflection in the mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it
looked at me. I was very much changed--oh, very, very much. At
first my face was so strange to me that I think I should have put
my hands before it and started back but for the encouragement I
have mentioned. Very soon it became more familiar, and then I knew
the extent of the alteration in it better than I had done at first.
It was not like what I had expected, but I had expected nothing
definite, and I dare say anything definite would have surprised me.

I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I
had been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven
was so good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter
tears and could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite
thankfully.

One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I
went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt's flowers. When they were
withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond
of. Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had
a right to preserve what he had sent to one so different--whether
it was generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to
him, even in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never
know, because I could have loved him--could have been devoted to
him. At last I came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I
treasured them only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past
and gone, never to be looked back on any more, in any other light.
I hope this may not seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.

I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the
glass when Charley came in on tiptoe.

"Dear, dear, miss!" cried Charley, starting. "Is that you?"

"Yes, Charley," said I, quietly putting up my hair. "And I am very
well indeed, and very happy."

I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but it was a greater
weight off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I
shall not conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite
conquer, but they always passed from me soon and the happier frame
of mind stayed by me faithfully.

Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good
spirits before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans
with Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to
be out before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out
again before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after
tea, and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill
and explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As
to restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn's good
housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or
drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the
park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her
cheerful face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent
nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a
chubby pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who
could canter--when he would--so easily and quietly that he was a
treasure. In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock
when I called him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We
arrived at such a capital understanding that when he was jogging
with me lazily, and rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I
patted his neck and said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter
when you know how much I like it; and I think you might oblige me,
for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep," he would give
his head a comical shake or two and set off directly, while Charley
would stand still and laugh with such enjoyment that her laughter
was like music. I don't know who had given Stubbs his name, but it
seemed to belong to him as naturally as his rough coat. Once we
put him in a little chaise and drove him triumphantly through the
green lanes for five miles; but all at once, as we were extolling
him to the skies, he seemed to take it ill that he should have been
accompanied so far by the circle of tantalizing little gnats that
had been hovering round and round his ears the whole way without
appearing to advance an inch, and stopped to think about it. I
suppose he came to the decision that it was not to be borne, for he
steadily refused to move until I gave the reins to Charley and got
out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy sort of good
humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his ear against
my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, "Now, Stubbs, I feel
quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride a
little while," for the moment I left him, he stood stock still
again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and
in this order we returned home, to the great delight of the
village.

Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages,
I am sure, for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us
go by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there
were faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the
grown people before and almost all the children, but now the very
steeple began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my
new friends was an old old woman who lived in such a little
thatched and whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was
turned up on its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This
old lady had a grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to
him for her and drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which
she had brought him up and where his old stool yet occupied its old
place. This was considered by the whole village the most wonderful
achievement in the world, but when an answer came back all the way
from Plymouth, in which he mentioned that he was going to take the
picture all the way to America, and from America would write again,
I got all the credit that ought to have been given to the post-
office and was invested with the merit of the whole system.

Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many
children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in
so many cottages, going on with Charley's education, and writing
long letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think
about that little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If
I did think of it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be
busy and forget it. I felt it more than I had hoped I should once
when a child said, "Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now
like she used to be?"  But when I found the child was not less fond
of me, and drew its soft hand over my face with a kind of pitying
protection in its touch, that soon set me up again. There were
many little occurrences which suggested to me, with great
consolation, how natural it is to gentle hearts to be considerate
and delicate towards any inferiority. One of these particularly
touched me. I happened to stroll into the little church when a
marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign the
register.

The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross
for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had
known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest
girl in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the
school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise.
She came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and
admiration stood in her bright eyes, "He's a dear good fellow,
miss; but he can't write yet--he's going to learn of me--and I
wouldn't shame him for the world!"  Why, what had I to fear, I
thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring
man's daughter!

The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever
blown, and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come
into my old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant
and so rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly
the whole night.

There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney
Wold where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The
wood had been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight,
and the bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I
rested there at least once every day. A picturesque part of the
Hall, called the Ghost's Walk, was seen to advantage from this
higher ground; and the startling name, and the old legend in the
Dedlock family which I had heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for
it, mingled with the view and gave it something of a mysterious
interest in addition to its real charms. There was a bank here,
too, which was a famous one for violets; and as it was a daily
delight of Charley's to gather wild flowers, she took as much to
the spot as I did.

It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house
or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on
my arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious
or uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in
this place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like
a footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the
lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady
Dedlock had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me
from the house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face
and figure were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say
that they repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever
reason or no reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day
at which my story now arrives.

I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and
Charley was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had
been looking at the Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry
afar off and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to
haunt it when I became aware of a figure approaching through the
wood. The perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and
the shadows of the branches on the ground made it so much more
intricate to the eye, that at first I could not discern what figure
it was. By little and little it revealed itself to be a woman's--a
lady's--Lady Dedlock's. She was alone and coming to where I sat
with a much quicker step, I observed to my surprise, than was usual
with her.

I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost
within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to
continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless.
Not so much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her
quick advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great
change in her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint,
as by a something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of
when I was a little child, something I had never seen in any face,
something I had never seen in hers before.

A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady
Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I
had known her.

"Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you," she said, now
advancing slowly. "You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been
very ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it."

I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I
could have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her
hand, and its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced
composure of her features, deepened the fascination that
overpowered me. I cannot say what was in my whirling thoughts.

"You are recovering again?" she asked kindly.

"I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock."

"Is this your young attendant?"

"Yes."

"Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?"

"Charley," said I, "take your flowers home, and I will follow you
directly."

Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and
went her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat
beside me.

I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw
in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.

I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I
could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent
and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when
she caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me,
compassionated me, and called me back to myself; when she fell down
on her knees and cried to me, "Oh, my child, my child, I am your
wicked and unhappy mother! Oh, try to forgive me!"--when I saw her
at my feet on the bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt,
through all my tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the
providence of God that I was so changed as that I never could
disgrace her by any trace of likeness, as that nobody could ever
now look at me and look at her and remotely think of any near tie
between us.

I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop
before me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken,
incoherent words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened
me to see her at MY feet. I told her--or I tried to tell her--that
if it were for me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon
me to forgive her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I
told her that my heart overflowed with love for her, that it was
natural love which nothing in the past had changed or could change.
That it was not for me, then resting for the first time on my
mother's bosom, to take her to account for having given me life,
but that my duty was to bless her and receive her, though the whole
world turned from her, and that I only asked her leave to do it. I
held my mother in my embrace, and she held me in hers, and among
the still woods in the silence of the summer day there seemed to be
nothing but our two troubled minds that was not at peace.

"To bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late.
I must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it
will. From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see
the way before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I
have brought upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it."

Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of
proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it
off again.

"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not
wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring
creature that I am!"

These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more
terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her
hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that
I should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any
endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no,
no, no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and
disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there,
in the only natural moments of her life.

My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly
frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She
could not have suspected me to be that child before. She had
followed me down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We
never could associate, never could communicate, never probably from
that time forth could interchange another word on earth. She put
into my hands a letter she had written for my reading only and said
when I had read it and destroyed it--but not so much for her sake,
since she asked nothing, as for her husband's and my own--I must
evermore consider her as dead. If I could believe that she loved
me, in this agony in which I saw her, with a mother's love, she
asked me to do that, for then I might think of her with a greater
pity, imagining what she suffered. She had put herself beyond all
hope and beyond all help. Whether she preserved her secret until
death or it came to be discovered and she brought dishonour and
disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was her solitary struggle
always; and no affection could come near her, and no human creature
could render her any aid.

"But is the secret safe so far?" I asked. "Is it safe now, dearest
mother?"

"No," replied my mother. "It has been very near discovery. It was
saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident--to-
morrow, any day."

"Do you dread a particular person?"

"Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of
these tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "I dread one
person very much."

"An enemy?"

"Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir
Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful without
attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and
reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses."

"Has he any suspicions?"

"Many."

"Not of you?" I said alarmed.

"Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at
a standstill, but I can never shake him off."

"Has he so little pity or compunction?"

"He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but
his calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the
holding possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer
or opponent in it."

"Could you trust in him?"

"I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years
will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the
end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,
nothing turns me."

"Dear mother, are you so resolved?"

"I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with
pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have
outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger,
and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully
as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but
my course through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but
one."

"Mr. Jarndyce--"  I was beginning when my mother hurriedly
inquired, "Does HE suspect?"

"No," said I. "No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!"  And I
told her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story.
"But he is so good and sensible," said I, "that perhaps if he knew--"

My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,
raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.

"Confide fully in him," she said after a little while. "You have
my free consent--a small gift from such a mother to her injured
child!- -but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even
yet."

I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now--for my
agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely
understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the
mother's voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my
childhood I had never learned to love and recognize, had never been
sung to sleep with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had
a hope inspired by, made an enduring impression on my memory--I say
I explained, or tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr.
Jarndyce, who had been the best of fathers to me, might be able to
afford some counsel and support to her. But my mother answered no,
it was impossible; no one could help her. Through the desert that
lay before her, she must go alone.

"My child, my child!" she said. "For the last time! These kisses
for the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We
shall meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be
what I have been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear
of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of
your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask!
Think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse,
in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which
it is capable! And then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven
to forgive her, which it never can!"

We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm
that she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast,
and with a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and
went from me into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below
me in the sun and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and
turrets, on which there had seemed to me to be such complete repose
when I first saw it, but which now looked like the obdurate and
unpitying watcher of my mother's misery.

Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been
in my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of
discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I
took such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had
been crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred
obligation that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It
was not a little while before I could succeed or could even
restrain bursts of grief, but after an hour or so I was better and
felt that I might return. I went home very slowly and told
Charley, whom I found at the gate looking for me, that I had been
tempted to extend my walk after Lady Dedlock had left me and that I
was over-tired and would lie down. Safe in my own room, I read the
letter. I clearly derived from it--and that was much then--that I
had not been abandoned by my mother. Her elder and only sister,
the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of life in me when
I had been laid aside as dead, had in her stern sense of duty, with
no desire or willingness that I should live, reared me in rigid
secrecy and had never again beheld my mother's face from within a
few hours of my birth. So strangely did I hold my place in this
world that until within a short time back I had never, to my own
mother's knowledge, breathed--had been buried--had never been
endowed with life--had never borne a name. When she had first seen
me in the church she had been startled and had thought of what
would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on, but
that was all then.

What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has
its own times and places in my story.

My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume
even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in
me that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been
reared. That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and
happier for many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had
a terror of myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my
own mother and of a proud family name. That I was so confused and
shaken as to be possessed by a belief that it was right and had
been intended that I should die in my birth, and that it was wrong
and not intended that I should be then alive.

These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out,
and when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the
world with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever
frightened of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a
witness, of the owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible
meaning of the old words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon
the shore, "Your mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are
hers. The time will come--and soon enough--when you will
understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a
woman can."  With them, those other words returned, "Pray daily
that the sins of others be not visited upon your head."  I could
not disentangle all that was about me, and I felt as if the blame
and the shame were all in me, and the visitation had come down.

The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still
contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after
walking a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on
the trees and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost
touched me, was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps
I might not have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of
mind. As it was, I took the path that led close by it.

I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the
terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and
its well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and
grave it was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and
wide flights of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and
how the trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old
stone pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling.
Then the way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by
turreted towers and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone
lions and grotesque monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and
snarled at the evening gloom over the escutcheons they held in
their grip. Thence the path wound underneath a gateway, and
through a court-yard where the principal entrance was (I hurried
quickly on), and by the stables where none but deep voices seemed
to be, whether in the murmuring of the wind through the strong mass
of ivy holding to a high red wall, or in the low complaining of the
weathercock, or in the barking of the dogs, or in the slow striking
of a clock. So, encountering presently a sweet smell of limes,
whose rustling I could hear, I turned with the turning of the path
to the south front, and there above me were the balustrades of the
Ghost's Walk and one lighted window that might be my mother's.

The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps
from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags.
Stopping to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I
was passing quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the
lighted window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into
my mind that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the
Ghost's Walk, that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the
stately house and that my warning feet were haunting it even then.
Seized with an augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I
ran from myself and everything, retraced the way by which I had
come, and never paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the
park lay sullen and black behind me.

Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again
been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and
thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on
the morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving
anticipation that I must have been of marble if it had not moved
me; from my guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to
tell Dame Durden, if I should see that little woman anywhere, that
they had moped most pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was
going to rack and ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and
that everybody in and about the house declared it was not the same
house and was becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters
together made me think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and
how happy I ought to be. That made me think of all my past life;
and that brought me, as it ought to have done before, into a better
condition.

For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or
I should never have lived; not to say should never have been
reserved for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things
had worked together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the
fathers were sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did
not mean what I had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was
as innocent of my birth as a queen of hers and that before my
Heavenly Father I should not be punished for birth nor a queen
rewarded for it. I had had experience, in the shock of that very
day, that I could, even thus soon, find comforting reconcilements
to the change that had fallen on me. I renewed my resolutions and
prayed to be strengthened in them, pouring out my heart for myself
and for my unhappy mother and feeling that the darkness of the
morning was passing away. It was not upon my sleep; and when the
next day's light awoke me, it was gone.

My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. How
to help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking
a long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not
know; so Charley and I and Stubbs--Stubbs saddled, for we never
drove him after the one great occasion--made a long expedition
along that road and back. On our return, we held a great review of
the house and garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest
condition, and had the bird out ready as an important part of the
establishment.

There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could
come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess
I was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling
so well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on
any one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all
repined--I am quite certain I did not, that day--but, I thought,
would she be wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not
be a little shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little
worse than she expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and
not find her? Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin
all over again?

I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and
it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure
beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I
considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,
which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?

Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But
to wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was
such bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and
meet her.

So I said to Charley, '"Charley, I will go by myself and walk along
the road until she comes."  Charley highly approving of anything
that pleased me, I went and left her at home.

But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many
palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was
not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back
and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of
the coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither
would, nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of
the way to avoid being overtaken.

Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice
thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it
instead of the best.

At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour
more yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in
the garden, "Here she comes, miss! Here she is!"

I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid
myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard
my darling calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love,
where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"

She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my
angel girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all
affection. Nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing!

Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful
girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely
cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like
a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of,
and pressing me to her faithful heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it
to Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and
I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian,
unless some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone;
still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the
attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement
to do it. Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the
remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night
sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me
what I used to be--except, of course, in that particular of which I
have said enough and which I have no intention of mentioning any
more just now, if I can help it.

The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first
evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the
house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for
Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before
yesterday, was great. Greater still when Ada asked me what she had
said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested, and
when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon
her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. But Charley
helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock
had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to
visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had
left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we
called it. Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am
sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would
have come to my ears in a month.

We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely
been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening
after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,
and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a
very important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out
of the room.

"Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes
at their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock
Arms."

"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the public-
house?"

"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward
and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron,
which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or
confidential, "but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and
will you please to come without saying anything about it."

"Whose compliments, Charley?"

"His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was
advancing, but not very rapidly.

"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"

"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little
maid. "It was W. Grubble, miss."

"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"

"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss?
The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she
were slowly spelling out the sign.

"Aye? The landlord, Charley?"

"Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman,
but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother's
the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll
drink himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.

Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive
now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade
Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having
put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as
much at home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.

Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his
very clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat
with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it
were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the
sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more
plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen
Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and
dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious
pumpkin (but I don't know which, and I doubt if many people did)
hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight,
from his often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish,
middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed
for his own fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never
wore a coat except at church.

He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it
looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was going
to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite
parlour being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears
I thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room
in which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!

"My dear Esther!" he said. "My best friend!"  And he really was so
warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of
his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him
that Ada was well.

"Answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said
Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.

I put my veil up, but not quite.

"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as
before.

I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve
and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his
kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so
because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now
conveyed to him.

"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a
greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me."

"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand
some one else."

"Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, "
--I suppose you mean him?"

"Of course I do."

"Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that
subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind--you, my
dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."

I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.

"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now. I
want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under
my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your
loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?"

"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily
welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so;
and you are as heartily welcome here!"

"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.

I asked him how he liked his profession.

"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It
does as well as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I
shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out
then and--however, never mind all that botheration at present."

So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the
opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking
look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!

"I am in town on leave just now," said Richard.

"Indeed?"

"Yes. I have run over to look after my--my Chancery interests
before the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh.
"We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I
promise you."

No wonder that I shook my head!

"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject."  Richard spoke with the
same shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four
winds for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?"

"Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?"

"That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a
fascinating child it is!"

I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He
answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old
infant--so he called Mr. Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told
him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent
on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to
come too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth--not to say
his sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard.
"He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and
green-hearted!"

I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in
his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about
that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was
charmed to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy
and sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never
been so happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the
mixture of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated
health the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it
might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B
happier in looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to
make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk
stocking.

"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.
Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he
evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful,
that's inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods
and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary
piping and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd,
our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making
Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of
a judgment from the bench. That's very pleasant, you know! Some
ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of
these legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?'  I
reply, 'My growling friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very
agreeable to me. There is a shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who
transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity.
I don't say it is for this that they exist--for I am a child among
you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or
myself for anything--but it may be so.'"

I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a
worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when
he most required some right principle and purpose he should have
this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy
dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought
I could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced
in the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and
contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in
Mr. Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless
candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as
it seemed or that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite
as well as any other part, and with less trouble.

They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the
gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, "Ada, my love, I
have brought a gentleman to visit you."  It was not difficult to
read the blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he
knew it, and I knew it. It was a very transparent business, that
meeting as cousins only.

I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my
suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly.
He admired her very much--any one must have done that--and I dare
say would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride
and ardour but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my
guardian. Still I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon
him extended even here, that he was postponing his best truth and
earnestness in this as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce
should be off his mind. Ah me! What Richard would have been
without that blight, I never shall know now!

He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to
make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too
implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he
had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for
the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear
old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make
an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right
through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I
proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this
was arranged. Mr. Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us
merry for an hour. He particularly requested to see little
Coavinses (meaning Charley) and told her, with a patriarchal air,
that he had given her late father all the business in his power and
that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up
in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a
good deal of employment in his way.

"For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole,
looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am
constantly being bailed out--like a boat. Or paid off--like a
ship's company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it,
you know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get
out by somebody's means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If
you were to ask me who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell
you. Let us drink to somebody. God bless him!"

Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for
him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy
and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the
sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;
the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold
since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so
massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details
of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the
glory of that day.

"This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. "None of
the jar and discord of law-suits here!"

But there was other trouble.

"I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs
in general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest."

"Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked.

"Oh, as to resting NOW," said Richard, "or as to doing anything
very definite NOW, that's not easy. In short, it can't be done; I
can't do it at least."

"Why not?" said I.

"You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished
house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off--to be from top
to bottom pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next week,
next month, next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle.
So do I. Now? There's no now for us suitors."

I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor
little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the
darkened look of last night. Terrible to think it bad in it also a
shade of that unfortunate man who had died.

"My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our
conversation."

"I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden."

"And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you
once never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse."

"There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard impatiently.
"Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple
of what I have to say, and it's as well at once. My dear Esther,
how can you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested
party and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know
nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not
be quite so well for me?"

"Oh, Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever
have seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his
roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this
solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy
suspicions?"

He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of
reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a
subdued voice, "Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean
fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being
poor qualities in one of my years."

"I know it very well," said I. "I am not more sure of anything."

"That's a dear girl," retorted Richard, "and like you, because it
gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of
all this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no
occasion to tell you."

"I know perfectly," said I. "I know as well, Richard--what shall I
say? as well as you do--that such misconstructions are foreign to
your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it."

"Come, sister, come," said Richard a little more gaily, "you will
be fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be
under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it
may have a little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an
honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am
sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints
everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why should
HE escape?"

"Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has
resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard."

"Oh, because and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way.
"I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious
to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties
interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die
off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things
may smoothly happen that are convenient enough."

I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach
him any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian's
gentleness towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from
resentment he had spoken of them.

"Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come
here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have
only come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well
and we got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of
this same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it
and to look into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John
Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I
don't amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her.
Now, Esther, I don't mean to amend that very objectionable course:
I will not hold John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of
compromise, which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases
him or displeases him, I must maintain my rights and Ada's. I have
been thinking about it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I
have come to."

Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good
deal. His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too
plainly.

"So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him
about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at
issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his
protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our
roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I
should take much more than he. I don't mean to say that it is the
one to be established, but there it is, and it has its chance."

"I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your
letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry
word."

"Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. "I am glad I said he was an
honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say
that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these
views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when
you tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into
the case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers
as I did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an
accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and
cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in
comparison."

"Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many
papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?"

"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther--"

"Or was once, long ago," said I.

"Is--is--must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must
be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of
is not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me;
John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change
everybody who has any share in it. Then the greater right I have
on my side when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end."

"All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no
others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier
because of so many failures?"

"It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness
kindling in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder.
"I am young and earnest, and energy and determination have done
wonders many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into
it. I devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life."

"Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"

"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned
affectionately. "You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl;
but you have your prepossessions. So I come round to John
Jarndyce. I tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those
terms which he found so convenient, we were not on natural terms."

"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"

"No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on
unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible.
See another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over
that I have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer
when I am free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-
day. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it and make him
reparation."

Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in
confusion and indecision until then!

"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada
to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John
Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I
wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a
great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will
soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and--
and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these
words, "I--I don't like to represent myself in this litigious,
contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada,"

I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than
in anything he had said yet.

"Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love. I
rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-
play by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don't you be
afraid."

I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.

"Not quite," said Richard. "I am bound not to withhold from her
that John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner,
addressing me as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my
opinions, and telling me that they should make no difference in
him. (All very well of course, but not altering the case.)  I also
want Ada to know that if I see her seldom just now, I am looking
after her interests as well as my own--we two being in the same
boat exactly--and that I hope she will not suppose from any flying
rumours she may hear that I am at all light-headed or imprudent; on
the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the
suit, and always planning in that direction. Being of age now and
having taken the step I have taken, I consider myself free from any
accountability to John Jarndyce; but Ada being still a ward of the
court, I don't yet ask her to renew our engagement. When she is
free to act for herself, I shall be myself once more and we shall
both be in very different worldly circumstances, I believe. If you
tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you
will do me a very great and a very kind service, my dear Esther;
and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on the head with greater
vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak House."

"Richard," said I, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear
you will not take advice from me?"

"It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any
other, readily."

As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and
character were not being dyed one colour!

"But I may ask you a question, Richard?"

"I think so," said he, laughing. "I don't know who may not, if you
may not."

"You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life."

"How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!"

"Are you in debt again?"

"Why, of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.

"Is it of course?"

"My dear child, certainly. I can't throw myself into an object so
completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don't know,
that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's only
a question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be
within the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,"
said Richard, quite amused with me, "I shall be all right! I shall
pull through, my dear!"

I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I
tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent
means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some
of his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and
gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least
effect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his
preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but I
determined to try Ada's influence yet.

So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went
home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to
give her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that
Richard was losing himself and scattering his whole life to the
winds. It made her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far,
far greater reliance on his correcting his errors than I could
have--which was so natural and loving in my dear!--and she
presently wrote him this little letter:

My dearest cousin,

Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I write this
to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you and to
let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our
cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you
will deeply, deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it)
so much wrong.

I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I
trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have some fears, my
dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now
laying up so much unhappiness for yourself--and if for yourself,
for me. In case this should be so, or in case you should entertain
much thought of me in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat
and beg you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will
make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon the shadow
in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying
this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and
in a natural repugnance for that source of trouble which had its
share in making us both orphans when we were very young, pray,
pray, let it go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that
there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing to be got
from it but sorrow.

My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you are quite
free and that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will
love much better than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you
will let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly
prefer to follow your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or
poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen
way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very rich with
you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost of dragging years
of procrastination and anxiety and of your indifference to other
aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so
little knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from
my own heart.

Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate

Ada

This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little
change in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right
and who was wrong--he would show us--we should see! He was
animated and glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but
I could only hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some
stronger effect upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had
then.

As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places
to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of
speaking to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in
my way, and I delicately said that there was a responsibility in
encouraging Richard.

"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at
the word with the pleasantest smile. "I am the last man in the
world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life--I
can't be."

"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I timidly enough, he
being so much older and more clever than I.

"No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a
most agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not
obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss
Summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from
his pocket, "there's so much money. I have not an idea how much.
I have not the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence--call
it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say
I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me
owe. If they don't stop, why should I? There you have Harold
Skimpole in little. If that's responsibility, I am responsible."

The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and
looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been
mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made
me feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.

"Now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed
to say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I
should consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You
appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I
see you, my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of
the whole little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel
inclined to say to myself--in fact I do say to myself very often--
THAT'S responsibility!"

It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I
persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not
confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.

"Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could. But, my dear Miss
Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand
and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after
fortune, I must go. If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!'  I
must join it. Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common
sense."

It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.

"Do you think so!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "Don't say that, don't
say that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense--an
excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadfully practical--change
for a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book in his
hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear
Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with
poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very
beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape
to come at it!'  The respectable companion instantly knocks him
down with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic
way that he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees,
fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that's a
painful change--sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but
disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled account-
book, I have none of the tax-gatherlng elements in my composition,
I am not at all respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps,
but so it is!"

It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and
Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole
in despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning
and whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There
were such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead
and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of
assault in their hands. They tended their flocks severely in
buckram and powder and put their sticking-plaster patches on to
terrify commoners as the chiefs of some other tribes put on their
war-paint. There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a
sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes of lightning, a town on
fire, and a stormed fort, all in full action between his horse's
two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how little a Dedlock made of
such trifles. The whole race he represented as having evidently
been, in life, what he called "stuffed people"--a large collection,
glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their various
twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and
always in glass cases.

I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I
felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,
hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming
slowly towards us.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "Vholes!"

We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.

"Friend and legal adviser," said Mr. Skimpole. "Now, my dear Miss
Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and
respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary man--Vholes is
THE man."

We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any
gentleman of that name.

"When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr. Skimpole, "he
parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,
with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to
Vholes."

"Had you known him long?" asked Ada.

"Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance
with him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession.
He had done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner--
taken proceedings, I think, is the expression--which ended in the
proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in
and pay the money--something and fourpence was the amount; I forget
the pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence,
because it struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe
anybody fourpence--and after that I brought them together. Vholes
asked me for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think
of it," he looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he
made the discovery, "Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me
something and called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do
you know, I think it MUST have been a five-pound note!"

His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's
coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.
Vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were
cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,
about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed
in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing
so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he
had of looking at Richard.

"I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr. Vholes, and now I
observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of
speaking. "I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know
when his cause was in the Chancelor's paper, and being informed by
one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather
unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the
coach early this morning and came down to confer with him."

"Yes," said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and
me, "we don't do these things in the old slow way now. We spin
along now! Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the
post town in, and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!"

"Anything you please, sir," returned Mr. Vholes. "I am quite at
your service."

"Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. "If I run down
to the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a
gig, or a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour
then before starting. I'll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you
and Esther take care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?"

He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in
the dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.

"Is Mr. Carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?" said I.
"Can it do any good?"

"No, miss," Mr. Vholes replied. "I am not aware that it can."

Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only
to be disappointed.

"Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own
interests," said Mr. Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own
principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it
out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
three daughters--Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my desire is so to
discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This
appears to be a pleasant spot, miss."

The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as
we walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.

"Indeed?" said Mr. Vholes. "I have the privilege of supporting an
aged father in the Vale of Taunton--his native place--and I admire
that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so
attractive here."

To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to
live altogether in the country.

"There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. My
health is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had
only myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits,
especially as the cares of business have prevented me from ever
coming much into contact with general society, and particularly
with ladies' society, which I have most wished to mix in. But with
my three daughters, Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my aged father--I
cannot afford to be selfish. It is true I have no longer to
maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred and second
year, but enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill
should be always going."

It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward
speaking and his lifeless manner.

"You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "They
are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little
independence, as well as a good name."

We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all
prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried
shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes's chair, whispered
something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud
I suppose as he had ever replied to anything--"You will drive me,
will you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you
please. I am quite at your service."

We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left
until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already
paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard
and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we
politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock
Arms and retire when the night-travellers were gone.

Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went
out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had
ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern
standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been
harnessed to it.

I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's
light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in
his hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up,
looking at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it.
I have before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the
summer lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows
and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and
the driving away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

My dear girl told me that night how Richard's being thereafter
prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this
difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging
heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;
how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would
think of him at all times--never of herself if she could devote
herself to him, never of her own delights if she could minister to
his.

And she kept her word?

I look along the road before me, where the distance already
shortens and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and
good above the dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit
it cast ashore, I think I see my darling.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A Struggle

When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were
punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome.
I was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my
housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as
if I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more,
duty, duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do
it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and
everything, you ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my
dear!"

The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and
business, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated
journeys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the
house, so many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a
general new beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's
leisure. But when these arrangements were completed and everything
was in order, I paid a visit of a few hours to London, which
something in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced
me to decide upon in my own mind.

I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that I
always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a
note previously asking the favour of her company on a little
business expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got
to London by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman
Street with the day before me.

Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and
so affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her
husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as
good; and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me
any possibility of doing anything meritorious.

The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was milling
his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice
--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of
dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law was
extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived most
happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she
meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the
good lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get,
and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)

"And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.

"Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see
very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma
thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-
master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her."

It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural
duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a
telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best
precautions against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe
that I kept this to myself.

"And your papa, Caddy?"

"He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of
sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him."

Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr.
Jellyby's head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that
he had found such a resting-place for it.

"And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?"

"Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a
grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's
health is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What
with schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the
apprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow!"

The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked
Caddy if there were many of them.

"Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are very
good children; only when they get together they WILL play--
children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the little
boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and
we distribute the others over the house as well as we can."

"That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.

"Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so
many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They
dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at
five every morning."

"Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.

"I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-
door apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our
room, not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the
window and see them standing on the door-step with their little
pumps under their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps."

All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.
Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully
recounted the particulars of her own studies.

"You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the
piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and
consequently I have to practise those two instruments as well as
the details of our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I
might have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon.
However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, a
little discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good ear, and
I am used to drudgery--I have to thank Ma for that, at all events--
and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world
over."  Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little
jingling square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with great
spirit. Then she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and
while she still laughed herself, said, "Don't laugh at me, please;
that's a dear girl!"

I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and
praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,
dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though
in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a
natural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that
was quite as good as a mission.

"My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer
me. I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes,
Esther, even in my small world! You recollect that first night,
when I was so unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of
my ever teaching people to dance, of all other possibilities and
impossibilities!"

Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming
back, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room,
Caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my
time yet, I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to
take her away then. Therefore we three adjourned to the
apprentices together, and I made one in the dance.

The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the
melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing
alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty
little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl,
with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who
brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule.
Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and
marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs
and feet--and heels particularly.

I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession
for them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed
for teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in
humble circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a
ginger-beer shop.

We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child
doing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared
to be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist.
Caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidently
founded upon him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her
own, which, united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly
agreeable. She already relieved him of much of the instruction of
these young people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his
part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He always
played the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and her
condescension to the boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hour
by the clock.

When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready
to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to
go out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval,
contemplating the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the
staircase to put on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's
hair, as I judged from the nature of his objections. Returning
with their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in them, they
then produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked under a
painted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whisked
her sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair of
shoes, shook her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake, and
answering my inquiry whether she liked dancing by replying, "Not
with boys," tied it across her chin, and went home contemptuous.

"Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not
finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you
before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther."

I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it
necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.

"It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is
very much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a
reputation to support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He
talks to Pa of an evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw
Pa so interested."

There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his
deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy
if he brought her papa out much.

"No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to
Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of
course I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but
they get on together delightfully. You can't think what good
companions they make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life,
but he takes one pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and
keeps putting it to his nose and taking it away again all the
evening."

That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of
life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha
appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.

"As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was
most afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as an
inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman
to that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear!
He lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the
crusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about
the house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short,"
said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl
and ought to be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?"

"To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say
to the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-
office on the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my
dear. Now I think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your
house."

"Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,"
returned Caddy.

To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's
residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and
having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut
in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,
immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was
an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an
unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room
was prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it
which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it
insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to
let him off.

Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there
too. He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at
a table reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.

"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis.
Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady
and get out of the gangway."

Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish
appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,
holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation,
with both hands.

I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was
more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.

"I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I.

Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his breast-
pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket with
a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head
as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.

"Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I.

Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I
think I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled
her head, and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and
appealed to Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder,
and was so unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some
difficulty she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door
into her bedroom adjoining.

"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness
of a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though
highly exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal
dictates."

I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have
turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up
my veil.

"I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I,
"in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what
you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I
feared I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy."

I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never
saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and
apprehension.

"Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I--I--beg your pardon, but
in our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. You
have referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the
honour of making a declaration which--"

Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly
swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again
to swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round
the room, and fluttered his papers.

"A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained,
"which rather knocks me over. I--er--a little subject to this sort
of thing--er--by George!"

I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his
hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his
chair into the corner behind him.

"My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear me--
something bronchial, I think--hem!--to remark that you was so good
on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration. You--
you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses are
present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was to
put in that admission."

"There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal
without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy."

"Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his
troubled hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you
credit. Er--this is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--
er--you wouldn't perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that
it's necessary, for your own good sense or any person's sense must
show 'em that--if I was to mention that such declaration on my part
was final, and there terminated?"

"I quite understand that," said I.

"Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a
satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit
that, miss?" said Mr. Guppy.

"I admit it most fully and freely," said I.

"Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I
regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances
over which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to
fall back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form
whatever, but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with
friendship's bowers."  Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief
and stopped his measurement of the table.

"I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began.

"I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so
persuaded that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--
will keep you as square as possible--that I can have nothing but
pleasure, I am sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to
offer."

"You were so good as to imply, on that occasion--"

"Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel
out of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied
anything."

"You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might
possibly have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my
fortunes by making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I
presume that you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of
my being an orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence
of Mr. Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have
come to beg of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness
to relinquish all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this
sometimes, and I have thought of it most lately--since I have been
ill. At length I have decided, in case you should at any time
recall that purpose and act upon it in any way, to come to you and
assure you that you are altogether mistaken. You could make no
discovery in reference to me that would do me the least service or
give me the least pleasure. I am acquainted with my personal
history, and I have it in my power to assure you that you never can
advance my welfare by such means. You may, perhaps, have abandoned
this project a long time. If so, excuse my giving you unnecessary
trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the assurance I have given you,
henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to do this, for my peace."

"I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express
yourself, miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I
gave you credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right
feeling, and if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I
am prepared to tender a full apology. I should wish to be
understood, miss, as hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as
your own good sense and right feeling will point out the necessity
of, to the present proceedings."

I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon
him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do
something I asked, and he looked ashamed.

"If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that
I may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to
speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately
as possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in
a confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I
always have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my
illness. There really is no reason why I should hesitate to say
that I know very well that any little delicacy I might have had in
making a request to you is quite removed. Therefore I make the
entreaty I have now preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient
consideration for me to accede to it."

I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had
looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and
very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word
and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a
living man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another
step in opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be
any satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time
touching the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly,
as if he were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--"

"I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank
you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!"

Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient
of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr.
Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either
imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there,
staring.

But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat,
and with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying
fervently, "Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend
upon me!"

"I do," said I, "quite confidently."

"I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and
staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own
witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should
wish to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions."

"Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be
surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any
engagement--"

"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr.
Guppy.

"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between
this gentleman--"

"William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of
Middlesex," he murmured.

"Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place,
Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself."

"Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full--er--excuse me--
lady's name, Christian and surname both?"

I gave them.

"Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank
you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn,
within the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman
Street, Oxford Street. Much obliged."

He ran home and came running back again.

"Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry
that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over
which I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was
wholly terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly
and despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I
only put it to you."

I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a
doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back
again.

"It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy.
"If an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but,
upon my soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except
the tender passion only!"

The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it
occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently
conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted
cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart;
but when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in
the same troubled state of mind.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Attorney and Client

The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is
inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane--a
little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of
two compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a
sparing man in his way and constructed his inn of old building
materials which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all
things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with
congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this dingy hatchment
commemorative of Symond are the legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.

Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation
retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall.
Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr.
Vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the
brightest midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of
cellarage staircase against which belated civilians generally
strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale
that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool,
while the other who elbows him at the same desk has equal
facilities for poking the fire. A smell as of unwholesome sheep
blending with the smell of must and dust is referable to the
nightly (and often daily) consumption of mutton fat in candles and
to the fretting of parchment forms and skins in greasy drawers.
The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. The place was last
painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man, and the two
chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of soot
evervwhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames have
but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to be
always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the
phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of
firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.

Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business,
but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater
attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a
most respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice,
which is a mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure,
which is another mark of respectability. He is reserved and
serious, which is another mark of respectability. His digestion is
impaired, which is highly respectable. And he is making hay of the
grass which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his father is
dependent on him in the Vale of Taunton.

The one great principle of the English law is to make business for
itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and
consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by
this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze
the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive
that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their
expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

But not perceiving this quite plainly--only seeing it by halves in
a confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket,
with a bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this
respectability of Mr. Vholes is brought into powerful play against
them. "Repeal this statute, my good sir?" says Mr. Kenge to a
smarting client. "Repeal it, my dear sir? Never, with my consent.
Alter this law, sir, and what will be the effect of your rash
proceeding on a class of practitioners very worthily represented,
allow me to say to you, by the opposite attorney in the case, Mr.
Vholes? Sir, that class of practitioners would be swept from the
face of the earth. Now you cannot afford--I will say, the social
system cannot afford--to lose an order of men like Mr. Vholes.
Diligent, persevering, steady, acute in business. My dear sir, I
understand your present feelings against the existing state of
things, which I grant to be a little hard in your case; but I can
never raise my voice for the demolition of a class of men like Mr.
Vholes."  The respectability of Mr. Vholes has even been cited with
crushing effect before Parliamentary committees, as in the
following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's evidence.  
"Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred
and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice
indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question:
And great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone
through for nothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer:
I am not prepared to say that. They have never given ME any
vexation; quite the contrary. Question: But you think that their
abolition would damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no
doubt of it. Question: Can you instance any type of that class?
Answer: Yes. I would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would
be ruined. Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession,
a respectable man? Answer: "--which proved fatal to the inquiry
for ten years--"Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST
respectable man."

So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less
disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is
coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is
something else gone, that these changes are death to people like
Vholes--a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the
Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps
more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's
father? Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to
be shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Vholes and his
relations being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to
abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus:
Make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!

In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in
the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of
timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a
pitfall and a nuisance. And with a great many people in a great
many instances, the question is never one of a change from wrong to
right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always
one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion,
Vholes.

The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long
vacation. Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags
hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort
of serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the
official den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much
respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if
he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were
scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his
hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without
looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a
chair, half sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon
his hand and looks the portrait of young despair.

"Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"

"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is
scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!"

"Why, what IS done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.

"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes, "The question
may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"

"And what is doing?" asks the moody client.

Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the
tips of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left
fingers, and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly
looking at his client, replies, "A good deal is doing, sir. We
have put our shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is
going round."

"Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or
five accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his
chair and walking about the room.

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes
wherever he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on
your account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much,
not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should
have more patience. You should sustain yourself better."

"I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?" says Richard,
sitting down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's
tattoo with his boot on the patternless carpet.

"Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were
making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his
professional appetite. "Sir," returns Vholes with his inward
manner of speech and his bloodless quietude, "I should not have had
the presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or
any man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters,
and that is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you
mention me so pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to
impart to you a little of my--come, sir, you are disposed to call
it insensibility, and I am sure I have no objection--say
insensibility--a little of my insensibility."

"Mr. Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no
intention to accuse you of insensibility."

"I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable
Vholes. "Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your
interests with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your
excited feelings I may appear, at such times as the present,
insensible. My daughters may know me better; my aged father may
know me better. But they have known me much longer than you have,
and the confiding eye of affection is not the distrustful eye of
business. Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of business being
distrustful; quite the contrary. In attending to your interests, I
wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that I should
have them; I court inquiry. But your interests demand that I
should be cool and methodical, Mr. Carstone; and I cannot be
otherwise--no, sir, not even to please you."

Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently
watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young
client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if
there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor
speak out, "What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the
vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many
means of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you
had asked me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have
answered you more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am
to be found here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is
my duty, Mr. C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to
me. If you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find
me here at all times alike. Other professional men go out of town.
I don't. Not that I blame them for going; I merely say I don't go.
This desk is your rock, sir!"

Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin.
Not to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to
him. Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is.

"I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly
and good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the
world and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man
of business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my
case, dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper
into difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually
disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in
myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you
will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do."

"You know," says Mr. Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir. I told
you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly
in a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out
of the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I
gave hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when
you say there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter
of fact, deny that."

"Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. "But how do you make it out?"

"Mr. Carstone, you are represented by--"

"You said just now--a rock."

"Yes, sir," says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping
the hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes,
and dust on dust, "a rock. That's something. You are separately
represented, and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of
others. THAT'S something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up,
we air it, we walk it about. THAT'S something. It's not all
Jarndyce, in fact as well as in name. THAT'S something. Nobody
has it all his own way now, sir. And THAT'S something, surely."

Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his
clenched hand.

"Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John
Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend
he seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--I
could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I
could not have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of
the world! Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me
the embodiment of the suit; that in place of its being an
abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more
indignant I am with him; that every new delay and every new
disappointment is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand."

"No, no," says vholes. "Don't say so. We ought to have patience,
all of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage."

"Mr. Vholes," returns the angry client. "You know as well as I
that he would have strangled the suit if he could."

"He was not active in it," Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of
reluctance. "He certainly was not active in it. But however, but
however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the
heart, Mr. C.!"

"You can," returns Richard.

"I, Mr. C.?"

"Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our
interests conflicting? Tell--me--that!" says Richard, accompanying
his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking
his hungry eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your
professional adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to
your interests, if I represented those interests as identical with
the interests of Mr. Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I
never impute motives; I both have and am a father, and I never
impute motives. But I must not shrink from a professional duty,
even if it sows dissensions in families. I understand you to be
now consulting me professionally as to your interests? You are so?
I reply, then, they are not identical with those of Mr. Jarndyce."

"Of course they are not!" cries Richard. "You found that out long
ago."

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party
than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied,
together with any little property of which I may become possessed
through industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and
Caroline. I also desire to live in amity with my professional
brethren. When Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir--I will not say
the very high honour, for I never stoop to flattery--of bringing us
together in this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no
opinion or advice as to your interests while those interests were
entrusted to another member of the profession. And I spoke in such
terms as I was bound to speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which
stands high. You, sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from
that keeping nevertheless and to offer them to me. You brought
them with clean hands, sir, and I accepted them with clean hands.
Those interests are now paramount in this office. My digestive
functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not in a good
state, and rest might improve them; but I shall not rest, sir,
while I am your representative. Whenever you want me, you will
find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come. During the
long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying your
interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for
moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor)
after Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you,
sir," says Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when
I ultimately congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your
accession to fortune--which, but that I never give hopes, I might
say something further about--you will owe me nothing beyond
whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the costs as
between solicitor and client not included in the taxed costs
allowed out of the estate. I pretend to no claim upon you, Mr. C.,
but for the zealous and active discharge--not the languid and
routine discharge, sir: that much credit I stipulate for--of my
professional duty. My duty prosperously ended, all between us is
ended."

Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his
principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,
perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for
twenty pounds on account.

"For there have been many little consultations and attendances of
late, sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,
"and these things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of
capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated
to you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be
too much openness between solicitor and client--that I was not a
man of capital and that if capital was your object you had better
leave your papers in Kenge's office. No, Mr. C., you will find
none of the advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir.
This," Vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock;
it pretends to be nothing more."

The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague
hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not
without perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may
bear, implying scant effects in the agent's hands. All the while,
Vholes, buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively.
All the while, Vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole.

Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for
heaven's sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him
through" the Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes,
lays his palm upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile,
"Always here, sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find
me here, sir, with my shoulder to the wheel."  Thus they part, and
Vholes, left alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little
matters out of his diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate
behoof of his three daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear
make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to
his cubs, not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged,
lank, and buttoned-up maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in
an earthy cottage situated in a damp garden at Kennington.

Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the
sunshine of Chancery Lane--for there happens to be sunshine there
to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and
passes under the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such
loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on
the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the
lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming
and consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby
yet, but that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in
precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be
different from ten thousand?

Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he
saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months
together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case
as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with
corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for
some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit
there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.
But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being
defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to
combat; from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand,
the time for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief
to turn to the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved
him from this ruin and make HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes
the truth. Is he in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays
his injuries equally at that door; he was thwarted, in that
quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in
the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself;
besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an
embodied antagonist and oppressor.

Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich
in such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the
Recording Angel?

Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,
biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is
swallowed up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Guppy and
Mr. Weevle are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been
leaning in conversation against the low stone parapet under the
trees. He passes close by them, seeing nothing but the ground.

"William," says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's
combustion going on there! It's not a case of spontaneous, but
it's smouldering combustion it is."

"Ah!" says Mr. Guppy. "He wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I
suppose he's over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him.
He was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place.
A good riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony,
that as I was mentioning is what they're up to."

Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the
parapet, as resuming a conversation of interest.

"They are still up to it, sir," says Mr. Guppy, "still taking
stock, still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps
of rubbish. At this rate they'll be at it these seven years."

"And Small is helping?"

"Small left us at a week's notice. Told Kenge his grandfather's
business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better
himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between
myself and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you
and I began it, and as he had me there--for we did--I put our
acquaintance on the old footing. That's how I come to know what
they're up to."

"You haven't looked in at all?"

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved
with you, I don't greatly relish the house, except in your company,
and therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little
appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour
by the clock! Tony"--Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly
eloquent--"it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind
once more that circumstances over which I have no control have made
a melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that
unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend.
That image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish
now in connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying
out in the court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and
bury 'em in oblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at
all likely (I put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your
knowledge of that capricious and deep old character who fell a prey
to the--spontaneous element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely
that on second thoughts he put those letters away anywhere, after
you saw him alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?"

Mr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly
thinks not.

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again
understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further
explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no
purpose to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have
pledged myself. I owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered
image, as also to the circumstances over which I have no control.
If you was to express to me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw
lying anywhere in your late lodgings any papers that so much as
looked like the papers in question, I would pitch them into the
fire, sir, on my own responsibility."

Mr. Weevle nods. Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by
having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic
and in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for
conducting anything in the form of an examination, or delivering
anything in the form of a summing up or a speech--accompanies his
friend with dignity to the court.

Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus' purse
of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.
Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed
brought down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs.
Smallweed, Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all
remain there until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not
abundant in quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and
searching, digging, delving, and diving among the treasures of the
late lamented. What those treasures are they keep so secret that
the court is maddened. In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring
out of tea-pots, crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs
and mattresses stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses
itself of the sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding
frontispiece) of Mr. Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr.
Elwes, of Suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic
narratives to Mr. Krook. Twice when the dustman is called in to
carry off a cartload of old paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the
whole court assembles and pries into the baskets as they come
forth. Many times the two gentlemen who write with the ravenous
little pens on the tissue-paper are seen prowling in the
neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late partnership being
dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing
interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in what are
professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject, is
received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the
regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in
the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the
sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that
refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head
towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.
Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a
double encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose
appearance is the signal for a general rally, it is in one
continual ferment to discover everything, and more.

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon
them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a
high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court's
expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are
considered to mean no good.

The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the
ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced
into the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from
the sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows;
but they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his
chair upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the
virtuous Judy groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs.
Smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap
of paper fragments, print, and manuscript which would appear to be
the accumulated compliments that have been sent flying at her in
the course of the day. The whole party, Small included, are
blackened with dust and dirt and present a fiendish appearance not
relieved by the general aspect of the room. There is more litter
and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier if possible;
likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead inhabitant and even
with his chalked writing on the wall.

On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously
fold their arms and stop in their researches.

"Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "How de do, gentlemen, how de do!
Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That's well, that's well.
Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay
your warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel
quite at home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see
you!"

Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy's eye
follows Mr. Weevle's eye. Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any
new intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr.
Smallweed's eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring,
like some wound-up instrument running down, "How de do, sir--how
de--how--"  And then having run down, he lapses into grinning
silence, as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in
the darkness opposite with his hands behind him.

"Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather
Smallweed. "I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such
note, but he is so good!"

Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes
a shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy
nod. Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do
and were rather amused by the novelty.

"A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr. Guppy
observes to Mr. Smallweed.

"Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish!
Me and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out
an inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come
to much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!"

Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended
by Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.

"Well, sir," says Mr. Weevle. "We won't intrude any longer if
you'll allow us to go upstairs."

"Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself
so, pray!"

As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and
looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very
dull and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on
that memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a
great disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the
dust from it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit,
packing the few movables with all possible speed and never speaking
above a whisper.

"Look here," says Tony, recoiling. "Here's that horrible cat
coming in!"

Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. "Small told me of her. She
went leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a
dragon, and got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for
a fortnight, and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin.
Did you ever see such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it,
don't she? Almost looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out,
you goblin!"

Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and
her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.
Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and
swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to
roam the house-tops again and return by the chimney.

"Mr. Guppy," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?"

Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British
Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old
ignoble band-box. "Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act
with courtesy towards every member of the profession, and
especially, I am sure, towards a member of it so well known as
yourself--I will truly add, sir, so distinguished as yourself.
Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir, I must stipulate that if you have any
word with me, that word is spoken in the presence of my friend."

"Oh, indeed?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but
they are amply sufficient for myself."

"No doubt, no doubt."  Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the
hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. "The matter is not of
that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any
conditions, Mr. Guppy."  He pauses here to smile, and his smile is
as dull and rusty as his pantaloons. "You are to be congratulated,
Mr. Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir."

"Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don't complain."

"Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and
access to elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in
London who would give their ears to be you."

Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still
reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of
himself, replies, "Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is
right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no
consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not
excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any
obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,
sir, and without offence--I repeat, without offence--"

"Oh, certainly!"

"--I don't intend to do it."

"Quite so," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. "Very good; I
see by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the
fashionable great, sir?"

He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft
impeachment.

"A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr.
Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back
to the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses
to his eyes. "Who is this? 'Lady Dedlock.'  Ha! A very good
likeness in its way, but it wants force of character. Good day to
you, gentlemen; good day!"

When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves
himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy
Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.

"Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be
quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this
place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that
between myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy
whom I now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication
and association. The time might have been when I might have
revealed it to you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the
oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to
circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole should
be buried in oblivion. I charge you as a friend, by the interest
you have ever testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any
little advances with which I may have been able to accommodate you,
so to bury it without a word of inquiry!"

This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic
lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of
hair and even in his cultivated whiskers.

CHAPTER XL

National and Domestic

England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle
would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being
nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle,
there has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile
meeting between those two great men, which at one time seemed
inevitable, did not come off, because if both pistols had taken
effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be
presumed that England must have waited to be governed until young
Coodle and young Doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were
grown up. This stupendous national calamity, however, was averted
by Lord Coodle's making the timely discovery that if in the heat of
debate he had said that he scorned and despised the whole ignoble
career of Sir Thomas Doodle, he had merely meant to say that party
differences should never induce him to withhold from it the tribute
of his warmest admiration; while it as opportunely turned out, on
the other hand, that Sir Thomas Doodle had in his own bosom
expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down to posterity as the mirror
of virtue and honour. Still England has been some weeks in the
dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well observed by Sir
Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the marvellous part of
the matter is that England has not appeared to care very much about
it, but has gone on eating and drinking and marrying and giving in
marriage as the old world did in the days before the flood. But
Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the danger, and all their
followers and hangers-on had the clearest possible perception of
the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not only condescended to
come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in with him all his
nephews, all his male cousins, and all his brothers-in-law. So
there is hope for the old ship yet.

Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country,
chiefly in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed
state he is available in a good many places simultaneously and can
throw himself upon a considerable portion of the country at one
time. Britannia being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the
form of sovereigns, and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and
in swearing herself black in the face that she does neither--
plainly to the advancement of her glory and morality--the London
season comes to a sudden end, through all the Doodleites and
Coodleites dispersing to assist Britannia in those religious
exercises.

Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees,
though no instructions have yet come down, that the family may
shortly be expected, together with a pretty large accession of
cousins and others who can in any way assist the great
Constitutional work. And hence the stately old dame, taking Time
by the forelock, leads him up and down the staircases, and along
the galleries and passages, and through the rooms, to witness
before he grows any older that everything is ready, that floors are
rubbed bright, carpets spread, curtains shaken out, beds puffed and
patted, still-room and kitchen cleared for action--all things
prepared as beseems the Dedlock dignity.

This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations
are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many
appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the
pictured forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock
in possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see
this gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I
think, of the gap that they would make in this domain when they
were gone; so find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it
could be without them; so pass from my world, as I pass from
theirs, now closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to
miss them, and so die.

Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set,
at this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house
of gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,
overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen
Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the
shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is
beguiled into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a
dimple in his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess
there steals a fleck of light and warmth that would have done it
good a hundred years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-
heeled shoes, very like her--casting the shadow of that virgin
event before her full two centuries--shoots out into a halo and
becomes a saint. A maid of honour of the court of Charles the
Second, with large round eyes (and other charms to correspond),
seems to bathe in glowing water, and it ripples as it glows.

But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and
shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age
and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture over the great chimney-
piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale,
and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood,
watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker
rises shadow on the wall--now a red gloom on the ceiling--now the
fire is out.

All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved
solemnly away and changed--not the first nor the last of beautiful
things that look so near and will so change--into a distant
phantom. Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet
scents in the garden are heavv in the air. Now the woods settle
into great masses as if they were each one profound tree. And now
the moon rises to separate them, and to glimmer here and there in
horizontal lines behind their stems, and to make the avenue a
pavement of light among high cathedral arches fantastically broken.

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more
than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,
stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in
the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time
for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a
pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues
upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the
heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the
armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from
stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully
suggestive of heads inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney
Wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is
the first to come, the last to be disturbed. At this hour and by
this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing
the handsome face with every breath that stirs.

"She is not well, ma'am," says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell's
audience-chamber.

"My Lady not well! What's the matter?"

"Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here--
I don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a
bird of passage like. My Lady has not been out much for her and
has kept her room a good deal."

"Chesney Wold, Thomas," rejoins the housekeeper with proud
complacency, "will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no
healthier soil in the world!"

Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably
hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape
of his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further
and retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and
ale.

This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next
evening, down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest
retinue, and down come the cousins and others from all the points
of the compass. Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward
rush mysterious men with no names, who fly about all those
particular parts of the country on which Doodle is at present
throwing himself in an auriferous and malty shower, but who are
merely persons of a restless disposition and never do anything
anywhere.

On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful.
A better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at
dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than
the other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here
and there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be
hard to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true
descent; and there are many who appreciate her sprightly
conversation, her French conundrums so old as to have become in the
cycles of time almost new again, the honour of taking the fair
Dedlock in to dinner, or even the privilege of her hand in the
dance. On these national occasions dancing may be a patriotic
service, and Volumnia is constantly seen hopping about for the good
of an ungrateful and unpensioning country.

My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and
being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at
all the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other
melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir
Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be
wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to
be received under that roof; and in a state of sublime
satisfaction, he moves among the company, a magnificent
refrigerator.

Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,
away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and
hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for
the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester
holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no
occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy.
Daily Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the
state of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to
conclude that Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had
thought her.

"How are we getting on?" says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands.
"ARE we safe?"

The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will
throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester
has just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright
particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.

"Volumnia," replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we
are doing tolerably."

"Only tolerably!"

Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own
particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat
near it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as
who should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it
must not be understood as a common expression, "Volumnia, we are
doing tolerably."

"At least there is no opposition to YOU," Volumnia asserts with
confidence.

"No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many
respects, I grieve to say, but--"

"It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!"

Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir
Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to
himself, "A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
precipitate."

In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock's
observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions
always delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome
wholesale order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats
that belong to him he treats as retail orders of less importance,
merely sending down the men and signifying to the tradespeople,
"You will have the goodness to make these materials into two
members of Parliament and to send them home when done."

"I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have
shown a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has
been of a most determined and most implacable description."

"W-r-retches!" says Volumnia.

"Even," proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent
cousins on sofas and ottomans, "even in many--in fact, in most--of
those places in which the government has carried it against a
faction--"

(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with
the Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same
position towards the Coodleites.)

"--Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be
constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without
being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds," says Sir Leicester,
eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling
indignation, "hundreds of thousands of pounds!"

If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too
innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well
with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge
and pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks,
"What for?"

"Volumnia," remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.
"Volumnia!"

"No, no, I don't mean what for," cries Volumnia with her favourite
little scream. "How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!"

"I am glad," returns Sir Leicester, "that you do mean what a pity."

Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people
ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.

"I am glad, Volumnia," repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these
mollifying sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. It is
disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and
without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?'
let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your
good sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or
elsewhere."

Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing
aspect towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these
necessary expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some
graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the
Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High
Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers
of the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight
gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.

"I suppose," observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to
recover her spirits after her late castigation, "I suppose Mr.
Tulkinghorn has been worked to death."

"I don't know," says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, "why Mr.
Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don't know what Mr.
Tulkinghorn's engagements may be. He is not a candidate."

Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester
could desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed
again, suggests, by somebody--to advise and make arrangements. Sir
Leicester is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been
in need of his assistance.

Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its
cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on
the park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was
mentioned.

A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility
now observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that
Tulkinghorn had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion
'bout something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be
highly jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that
Coodle man was floored.

Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,
that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady
turns her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as
before.

Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so
original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing
all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded
that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,
and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with
candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock
delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.

"He has not been here once," she adds, "since I came. I really had
some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I
had almost made up my mind that he was dead."

It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker
gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, as if she
thought, "I would he were!"

"Mr. Tulkinghorn," says Sir Leicester, "is always welcome here and
always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and
deservedly respected."

The debilitated cousin supposes he is "'normously rich fler."

"He has a stake in the country," says Sir Leicester, "I have no
doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost
on a footing of equality with the highest society."

Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.

"Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia with her little
withered scream.

"A rat," says my Lady. "And they have shot him."

Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and
candles.

"No, no," says Sir Leicester, "I think not. My Lady, do you object
to the twilight?"

On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.

"Volumnia?"

Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the
dark.

"Then take them away," says Sir Leicester. "Tulkinghorn, I beg
your pardon. How do you do?"

Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his
passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's hand, and
subsides into the chair proper to him when he has anything to
communicate, on the opposite side of the Baronet's little
newspaper-table. Sir Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not
being very well, will take cold at that open window. My Lady is
obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. Sir
Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his
seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff.

"Now," says Sir Leicester. "How has that contest gone?"

"Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought
in both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to
one."

It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no
political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says "you"
are beaten, and not "we."

Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such
a thing. 'The debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of thing
that's sure tapn slongs votes--giv'n--Mob.

"It's the place, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the
fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, "where they
wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell's son."

"A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had
the becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to
decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the
sentiments expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some
half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his
decision which I am glad to acknowledge."

"Ha!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It did not prevent him from being
very active in this election, though."

Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "Did I
understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very
active in this election?"

"Uncommonly active."

"Against--"

"Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and
emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In
the business part of the proceedings he carried all before him."

It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that
Sir Leicester is staring majestically.

"And he was much assisted," says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, "by
his son."

"By his son, sir?" repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.

"By his son."

"The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady's service?"

"That son. He has but one."

"Then upon my honour," says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause
during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, "then
upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,
the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters have--a--
obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion by which
things are held together!"

General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is
really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in and do
something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks--country's going--
Dayvle--steeple-chase pace.

"I beg," says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, "that we may
not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous.
My Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman--"

"I have no intention," observes my Lady from her window in a low
but decided tone, "of parting with her."

"That was not my meaning," returns Sir Leicester. "I am glad to
hear you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of
your patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from
these dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be
done in such association to her duties and principles, and you
might preserve her for a better fate. You might point out to her
that she probably would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney
Wold by whom she would not be--"  Sir Leicester adds, after a
moment's consideration, "dragged from the altars of her
forefathers."

These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference
when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head
in reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little
stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.

"It is worthy of remark," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "however, that
these people are, in their way, very proud."

"Proud?"  Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.

"I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the
girl--yes, lover and all--instead of her abandoning them, supposing
she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances."

"Well!" says Sir Leicester tremulously. "Well! You should know,
Mr. Tulkinghorn. You have been among them."

"Really, Sir Leicester," returns the lawyer, "I state the fact.
Why, I could tell you a story--with Lady Dedlock's permission."

Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he
is going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?

"No. Real flesh and blood."  Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant
and repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual
monotony, "Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester,
these particulars have only lately become known to me. They are
very brief. They exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for
the present. Lady Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?"

By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking
towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can
be seen, perfecfly still.

"A townsman of this Mrs. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel
circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter
who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a
great lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of
your condition, Sir Leicester."

Sir Leicester condescendingly says, "Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn,"
implying that then she must have appeared of very considerable
moral dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.

"The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,
and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.
Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she
had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been
engaged to marry a young rake--he was a captain in the army--
nothing connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry
him, but she gave birth to a child of which he was the father."

By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the
moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile,
perfectly still.

"The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but
a train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to
discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on
her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows
how difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be
always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement,
you may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the
husband's grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr.
Rouncewell's townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed
the girl to be patronized and honoured than he would have suffered
her to be trodden underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride,
that he indignantly took her away, as if from reproach and
disgrace. He had no sense of the honour done him and his daughter
by the lady's condescension; not the least. He resented the girl's
position, as if the lady had been the commonest of commoners. That
is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock will excuse its painful nature."

There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting
with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there
ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the
threshold. The majority incline to the debilitated cousin's
sentiment, which is in few words--"no business--Rouncewell's fernal
townsman."  Sir Leicester generally refers back in his mind to Wat
Tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of his own.

There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been
kept at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began,
and this is the first night in many on which the family have been
alone. It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to
ring for candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a
lake, and then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises,
and comes forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking
cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it;
Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes
another, a very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock,
graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes
away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph,
not at all improving her as a question of contrast.

CHAPTER XLI

In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room

Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the
journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on
his face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and
were, in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and
strictly self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as
great an injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or
sentiment or any romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied.
Perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power upon him as he
loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand and
holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down.

There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty
large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his
reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to
it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour
or so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But
he happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the
documents awaiting his notice--with his head bent low over the
table, the old man's sight for print or writing being defective at
night--he opens the French window and steps out upon the leads.
There he again walks slowly up and down in the same attitude,
subsiding, if a man so cool may have any need to subside, from the
story he has related downstairs.

The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk
on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read
their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though
their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he
be seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the
leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented
below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in
other characters nearer to his hand.

As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his
thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped
in passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling
of his room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is
opposite the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door,
too, but the night being warm he did not close it when he came
upstairs. These eyes that meet his own are looking in through the
glass from the corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood
has not flushed into his face so suddenly and redly for many a long
year as when he recognizes Lady Dedlock.

He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the
doors behind her. There is a wild disturbance--is it fear or
anger?--in her eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she
looked downstairs two hours ago.

Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be
as pale, both as intent.

"Lady Dedlock?"

She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped
into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like
two pictures.

"Why have you told my story to so many persons?"

"Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew
it."

"How long have you known it?"

"I have suspected it a long while--fully known it a little while."

"Months?"

"Days."

He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in
his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has
stood before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal
politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be
defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same
distance, which nothing has ever diminished.

"Is this true concerning the poor girl?"

He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite
understanding the question.

"You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my
story also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls
and cried in the streets?"

So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power
this woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr.
Tulkinghorn's thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his
ragged grey eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual
under her gaze.

"No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of
Sir Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a
hand. But it would be a real case if they knew--what we know."

"Then they do not know it yet?"

"No."

"Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?"

"Really, Lady Dedlock," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, "I cannot give a
satisfactory opinion on that point."

And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he
watches the struggle in her breast, "The power and force of this
woman are astonishing!"

"Sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all
the energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, "I will make it
plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated
it, and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr.
Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the
power of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl
tarnished by having for a moment been, although most innocently,
the subject of my great and distinguished patronage. But I have an
interest in her, or I should rather say--no longer belonging to
this place--I had, and if you can find so much consideration for
the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be very
sensible of your mercy."

Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug
of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.

"You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that
too. Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim
that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my
husband in obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of
your discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will
dictate. I am ready to do it."

And she would do it, thinks the lawver, watchful of the firm hand
with which she takes the pen!

"I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself."

"I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare
myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you
have done. Do what remains now."

"Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to
say a few words when you have finished."

Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do
it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened
window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and
the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one!
Where are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined
to add the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn
existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious
questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under
the watching stars upon a summer night.

"Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine," Lady Dedlock
presently proceeds, "I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you
would be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears."

He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with
her disdainful hand.

"Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My
jewels are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be
found there. So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some
ready money I had with me, please to say, but no large amount. I
did not wear my own dress, in order that I might avoid observation.
I went to be henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other
charge with you."

"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "I
am not sure that I understand you. You want--"

"To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this
hour."

Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving
hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-
frill, shakes his head.

"What? Not go as I have said?"

"No, Lady Dedlock," he very calmly replies.

"Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you
forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and
who it is?"

"No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means."

Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it
in her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or
foot or raising his voice, "Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop
and hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the
alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before
every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it."

He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand
confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but
when so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a
moment in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.

He promptly says again, "Have the goodness to hear me, Lady
Dedlock," and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She
hesitates, but he motions again, and she sits down.

"The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady
Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for
them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well
known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have
appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery."

"Sir," she returns without looking up from the ground on which her
eyes are now fixed, "I had better have gone. It would have been
far better not to have detained me. I have no more to say."

"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear."

"I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can't breathe where I
am."

His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant's
misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and
dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the
terrace below. But a moment's observation of her figure as she
stands in the window without any support, looking out at the stars
--not up-gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens,
reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a
little behind her.

"Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision
satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear
what to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the
meantime, to keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not
to wonder that I keep it too."

He pauses, but she makes no reply.

"Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are
honouring me with your attention?"

"I am."

"'Thank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your
strength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but
I have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go
on. The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester."

"'Then why," she asks in a low voice and without removing her
gloomy look from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his
house?"

"Because he IS the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion
to tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man, that his
reliance upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of
the sky would not amaze him more than your fall from your high
position as his wife."

She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly
as ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.

"I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this
case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of
my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as
to shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester's trust and
confidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not
that he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that
nothing can prepare him for the blow."

"Not my flight?" she returned. "Think of it again."

"Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a
hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be
impossible to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be
thought of."

There is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no
remonstrance.

"When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and
the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir
Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his
patrimony"--Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here--"are, I need not say to
you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable."

"Go on!"

"Therefore," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-
trot style, "I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if
it can be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his
wits or laid upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him
to-morrow morning, how could the immediate change in him be
accounted for? What could have caused it? What could have divided
you? Lady Dedlock, the wall-chalking and the street-crying would
come on directly, and you are to remember that it would not affect
you merely (whom I cannot at all consider in this business) but
your husband, Lady Dedlock, your husband."

He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or
animated.

"There is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case
presents itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to
infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation,
even knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it
might be so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better
for common sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all
this into account, and it combines to render a decision very
difficult."

She stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are
beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.

"My experience teaches me," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this
time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business
consideration of the matter like a machine. "My experience teaches
me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far
better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three
fourths of their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester
married, and so I always have thought since. No more about that.
I must now be guided by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg
you to keep your own counsel, and I will keep mine."

"I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your
pleasure, day by day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky.

"Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock."

"It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the
stake?"

"I am sure that what I recommend is necessary."

"I am to remain on this gaudy platforna on which my miserable
deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when
you give the signal?" she said slowly.

"Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without
forewarning you."

She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from
memory or calling them over in her sleep.

"We are to meet as usual?"

"Precisely as usual, if you please."

"And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?"

"As you have done so many years. I should not have made that
reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your
secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no
better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have
never wholly trusted each other."

She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time
before asking, "Is there anything more to be sald to-night?"

"Why," Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his
hands, "I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my
arrangements, Lady Dedlock."

"You may be assured of it."

"Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business
precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in
any communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview
I have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's
feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been
happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if
the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not."

"I can attest your fidelity, sir."

Both before and after saving it she remains absorbed, but at length
moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence,
towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as
he would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years
ago, and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not
an ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes
into the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a
very slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he
reflects when he is left alone, the woman has been putting no
common constraint upon herself.

He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own
rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her
hands clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain.
He would think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up
and down for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed
by the faithful step upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the
now chilled air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls
asleep. And truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into
the turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the
digger and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be
digging.

The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant
country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins
entering on various public employments, principally receipt of
salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty
thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false
teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of
Bath and the terror of every other commuuity. Also into rooms high
in the roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables,
where humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in
holy matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun,
drawing everything up with it--the Wills and Sallys, the latent
vapour in the earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and
beasts and creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf
and unfold emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the
great kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the
lightsome air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn's
unconscious head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady
Dedlock are in their happy home and that there is hospitality at
the place in Lincolnshire.

CHAPTER XLII

In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers

From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock
property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and
dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two
places is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold
as if it were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers
as if he had never been out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither
changes his dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards.
He melted out of his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the
late twilight, he melts into his own square.

Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant
fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into
wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and
faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged
without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his
cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has
forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In
the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked
himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his
mellowed port-wine half a century old.

The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.
Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble
mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the door-
steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on the
top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.

"Is that Snagsby?"

"Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up,
sir, and going home."

"Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?"

"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his
head in his deference towards his best customer, "I was wishful to
say a word to you, sir."

"Can you say it here?"

"Perfectly, sir."

"Say it then."  The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron
railing at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter
lighting the court-yard.

"It is relating," says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, "it
is relating--not to put too fine a point upon it--to the foreigner,
sir!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "What foreigner?"

"The foreign female, sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not
acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her
manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly
foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had
the honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night."

"Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense."

"Indeed, sir?" Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind
his hat. "I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners
in general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that."  Mr. Snagsby
appears to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of
repeating the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse
himself.

"And what can you have to say, Snagsby," demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,
"about her?"

"Well, sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with
his hat, "it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is
very great--at least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure--
but my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too
fine a point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you
see, a foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the
shop, and hovering--I should be the last to make use of a strong
expression if I could avoid it, but hovering, sir--in the court--
you know it is--now ain't it? I only put it to yourself, sir.

Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in
a cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.

"Why, what do you mean?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Just so, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it
yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when
coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see,
the foreign female--which you mentioned her name just now, with
quite a native sound I am sure--caught up the word Snagsby that
night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the
direction and come at dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is
timid and has fits, and she, taking fright at the foreigner's
looks--which are fierce--and at a grinding manner that she has of
speaking--which is calculated to alarm a weak mind--gave way to it,
instead of bearing up against it, and tumbled down the kitchen
stairs out of one into another, such fits as I do sometimes think
are never gone into, or come out of, in any house but ours.
Consequently there was by good fortune ample occupation for my
little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When she DID say
that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his employer
(which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of viewing a
clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually calling at
my place until she was let in here. Since then she has been, as I
began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir"--Mr. Snagsby repeats the
word with pathetic emphasis--"in the court. The effects of which
movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn't wonder if it
might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even in
the neighbours' minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was
possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows," says Mr.
Snagsby, shaking his head, "I never had an idea of a foreign
female, except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms
and a baby, or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings.
I never had, I do assure you, sir!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires
when the stationer has finished, "And that's all, is it, Snagsby?"

"Why yes, sir, that's all," says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough
that plainly adds, "and it's enough too--for me."

"I don't know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless
she is mad," says the lawyer.

"Even if she was, you know, sir," Mr. Snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't
be a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a
foreign dagger planted in the family."

"No," says the other. "Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am
sorry you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her
here."

Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes
his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs,
saying to himself, "These women were created to give trouble the
whole earth over. The mistress not being enough to deal with,
here's the maid now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!"

So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky
rooms, lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to
see much of the Allegory over-head there, but that importunate
Roman, who is for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is
at his old work pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much
attention, Mr. Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket,
unlocks a drawer in which there is another key, which unlocks a
chest in which there is another, and so comes to the cellar-key,
with which he prepares to descend to the regions of old wine. He
is going towards the door with a candle in his hand when a knock
comes.

"Who's this? Aye, aye, mistress, it's you, is it? You appear at a
good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you
want?"

He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall and
taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of
welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her
lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly
closes the door before replying.

"I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir."

"HAVE you!"

"I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me,
he is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for
you."

"Quite right, and quite true."

"Not true. Lies!"

At times there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle
Hortense so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such
subject involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr.
Tulkinghorn's case at present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with
her eyes almost shut up (but still looking out sideways), is only
smiling contemptuously and shaking her head.

"Now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the
chimney-piece. "If you have anything to say, say it, say it."

"Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby."

"Mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with
the key.

"Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have
attrapped me--catched me--to give you information; you have asked
me to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night,
you have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it
not?"  Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring.

"You are a vixen, a vixen!"  Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as
he looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, "Well, wench, well.
I paid you."

"You paid me!" she repeats with fierce disdain. "Two sovereign! I
have not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them
from me!"  Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom
as she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor
that they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into
corners and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.

"Now!" says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again.
"You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains
herself with a sarcastic laugh.

"You must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to
throw money about in that way!"

"I AM rich," she returns. "I am very rich in hate. I hate my
Lady, of all my heart. You know that."

"Know it? How should I know it?"

"Because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give
you that information. Because you have known perfectly that I was
en-r-r-r-raged!"  It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll
the letter "r" sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she
assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and
setting all her teeth.

"Oh! I knew that, did I?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards
of the key.

"Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me
because you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her."  
Mademoiselle folds her arms and throws this last remark at him over
one of her shoulders.

"Having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?"

"I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition!
If you cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue
her, to chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help
you well, and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know
that?"