Flight

Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow,
as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep
preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the
freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire,
making its way towards London.

Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and
a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide
night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are
non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected.
Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out.
Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at
one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with
an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up
and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows
tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where
there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned
in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the
night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.

Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits
within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey
cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as
being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in
accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell
is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The
old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately
manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it
often to her lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," says she many
times, "and you found out my George's mother!"

"Why, George," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am,
and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things
my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the
comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line
into his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt
sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother
into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that
he had behaved bad to her."

"Never, my dear!" returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. "My
blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me,
was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and
went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know
about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he
didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't be
a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from
a baby!"

The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls,
all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay
good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at
Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young
gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been
angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now
to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher
heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its
load of affectionate distress.

Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves
the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--not without
passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes--and
presently chirps up in her cheery manner, "So I says to George when I
goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe
outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I
have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and
out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy
penitent.' 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I AM
melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.'
'What have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says
George, shaking his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a
long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to
heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no
more.' Now, ma'am, when George says to me that it's best not tried to
be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I
draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that
afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the
lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain
before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets
himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon
years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old
lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs. Rouncewell,
housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down
at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before
that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night,
'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'"

All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least
within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with
a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the
hum of the wheels.

"Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs. Rouncewell. "Bless you, and
thank you, my worthy soul!"

"Dear heart!" cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. "No
thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so
ready to pay 'em! And mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do
on finding George to be your own son is to make him--for your
sake--have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear
himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't
do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and
lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter
form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with
truth and justice for ever and a day.

"He shall have," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got
for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and
thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole
family will do their best. I--I know something, my dear; and will
make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years,
and finding him in a jail at last."

The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying
this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful
impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers
them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet
wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My
Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.

The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise
comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise
departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and
hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day.
London reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great
tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected--as
she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were
the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any
other military station.

But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is
confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her
lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its
usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece
of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher
is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has
ruffled it these many years.

Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the
act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to
him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as
he shuts the door.

So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be
alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old
housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite
enough for Mrs. Bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the
mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their
relationship.

Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word
betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all
unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her
emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.
Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,
of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return
since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,
and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such
touching language that Mrs. Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they
run glistening down her sun-brown face.

"George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!"

The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls
down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether
in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands
together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them
towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.

"My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite
still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a
man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he
must be, if it pleased God he was alive!"

She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All
that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the
whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with
her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of
old girls as she is.

"Mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me
first of all, for I know my need of it."

Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has
done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these
many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never
believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this
happiness--and she is an old woman now and can't look to live very
long--she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had
her senses, as her beloved son George.

"Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my
reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a
purpose in me too. When I left home I didn't care much, mother--I am
afraid not a great deal--for leaving; and went away and 'listed,
harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not
I, and that nobody cared for me."

The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but
there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of
expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in
which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.

"So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had
'listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I
thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and
when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when
I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I
didn't think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a
service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself
why should I ever write."

"I don't find any fault, child--but not to ease my mind, George? Not
a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?"

This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with
a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.

"Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small
consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,
respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance
North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and
famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like
him, but self-unmade--all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my
little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for
most things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself
known? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of
it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a
man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me;
and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your
mind as it was."

The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his
powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.

"No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be
so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear
mother, some good might have come of it to myself--and there was the
meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have
purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold;
you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's family
together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something
for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of
you feel sure of me when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?
How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you
an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to
himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother's
children in the face and pretend to set them an example--I, the
vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and
unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words,
mother, when I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your
bed. Now, lie upon it.'"

Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the
old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told
you so!" The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her
interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke
between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards
repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never
failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to
resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.

"This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best
amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I
should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once
down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old
comrade's wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank
her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and
might."

To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.

And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear
recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy
close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must
be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence,
that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be
got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised
to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise
to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he
is released, or he will break her heart.

"Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper,
stopping her with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a
late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother,
I know?"

A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.

"If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,
she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the
best advice and assistance."

"And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for
your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me--out in the
world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it
myself--and will be of great service."

"Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"

"Surely not, my dear."

"Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."

"Not know what, my dear?"

"Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my
mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done
so much to raise himself while I've been soldiering that I haven't
brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under
this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any
pleasure in such a discovery? It's impossible. No, keep my secret
from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my
secret from my brother, of all men."

"But not always, dear George?"

"Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all--though I may come to ask
that too--but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to
him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the
trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be
governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems
to take it."

As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth
of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet's face, his mother yields her
implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.

"In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and
obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am
ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at
his writing on the table, "an exact account of what I knew of the
deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.
It's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in
it but what's wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight
on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I
hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my
own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not
to have any."

Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time
being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again
the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the
trooper holds her to his broad chest.

"Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?"

"I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some
business there that must be looked to directly," Mrs. Rouncewell
answers.

"Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of
course I know you will. Why should I ask it!"

Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.

"Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.
Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the
hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand
pound in gold, my dear!" So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the
old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.

No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce
Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping
out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs.
Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off,
arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and
falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened.

My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with
the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is
looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so
leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell.
What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?

"Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with
you?"

What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble
so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why
does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange
mistrust?

"What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."

"Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son--my youngest, who went
away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."

"For debt?"

"Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."

"For what is he in prison then?"

"Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as--as I
am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn."

What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does
she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?

"Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must
have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I
was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But
think of my dear son wrongfully accused."

"I do not accuse him."

"No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger.
Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say
it!"

What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the
person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust?
Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with
fear.

"My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in
my old age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so
solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after
night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your
rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last
night, my Lady, I got this letter."

"What letter is it?"

"Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened
whisper, "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe
what's written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain
that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a
heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to
others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and
any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think
of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most
I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your
own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your
friends; and all who admire you--and all do--as a beautiful and
elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can't
be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry
reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray,
oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been
passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to
clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with
genuine simplicity, "I am so humble in my place and you are by nature
so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,
but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg
and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or
justice at this fearful time!"

Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter
from her hand.

"Am I to read this?"

"When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the
most that I consider possible."

"I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can
affect your son. I have never accused him."

"My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after
reading the letter."

The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth
she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the
sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong
earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long
accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long
schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts
up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads
one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and
the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even
her wonder until now.

She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account
of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,
shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with
the word "murderess" attached.

It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground
she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before
her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have
probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her
head before she begins to understand them.

"Let him come in!"

He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from
the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.
Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud,
chilling state.

"Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from
one who has never been welcome to your ladyship"--which he don't
complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any
particular reason on the face of things why he should be--"but I hope
when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault
with me," says Mr. Guppy.

"Do so."

"Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship," Mr.
Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at
his feet, "that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned
to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart
until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,
communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your
ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps
whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson's
wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over
which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the
distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again."

And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.

"And yet I am here now," Mr. Guppy admits. "My object being to
communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am
here."

He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "Nor can
I," Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too
particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that
it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no
interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for
my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred--I, in point
of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have
seen 'em further first."

Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair
with both hands.

"Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I
was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and
whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time
apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call
sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely
difficult for me to be sure that I hadn't inadvertently led up to
something contrary to Miss Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no
recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man
of business neither."

Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately
withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.

"Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea
what that party was up to in combination with others that until the
loss which we all deplore I was gravelled--an expression which your
ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to
consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise--a name by which
I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not
acquainted with--got to be so close and double-faced that at times it
wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the
exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual
friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic
turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room),
I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your
ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask
you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't
mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss
Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower
extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?"

"No!"

"Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and
have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited
at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an
hour's turn afterwards to avoid them."

"What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand
you. What do you mean?"

"Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no
occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my
promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has
dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those
letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed
when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown
upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been
here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or
making."

Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.

"Your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what I say
or whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to
Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I
had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In
case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your
guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should
hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive
your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and
assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by me
again."

She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when
he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.

"Where is Sir Leicester?"

Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.

"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"

Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,
which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.

So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband
knows his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be spreading while
she thinks about it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so long
foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an
invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.

Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.
Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes
upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she
recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may
be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before
merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the
hangman's hands were at her neck.

She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all
wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She
rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks
and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really
were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.

For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed,
however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been
closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing
her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences
would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure
was laid low--which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she
sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to
think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take
him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her in
his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places.
So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was
his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the
arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and
mangling piecemeal!

Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from
this pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and imperturbable before her
in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable
in his coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she
flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,
overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance
is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.

She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves
them on her table:

   If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe
   that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me,
   for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard,
   or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that
   fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After
   he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the
   garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him
   and make one last petition that he would not protract the
   dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you
   do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next
   morning.

   I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his
   door, but there was no reply, and I came home.

   I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May
   you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the
   unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous
   devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper shame than
   that with which she hurries from herself--and who writes
   this last adieu.

She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money,
listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens
and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.

OK, let's back up a bit to see what else is happening. A day before Bucket explained the whole deal, Mrs. Bagnet went up to Chesney Wold and found Mr. George's mom, who turns out to be... Mrs. Rouncewell! She's totally psyched and has already forgiven George for not even writing all these years. She didn't even know if he was alive or dead! Anyway, now Mrs. Bagnet fills her in on how she found her and that Mrs. Rouncewell needs to convince him to get a lawyer. There is a tearful reunion in the jail. Dickens is really good at these scenes. Shmoop might have needed a handkerchief. George agrees to a lawyer and anything else his mom wants. His only condition is that he doesn't want his brother the Ironmaster knowing about him. He's embarrassed that he hasn't amounted to anything. Mrs. Bagnet takes Mrs. Rouncewell home to the Dedlock place in London. It's now the morning of Bucket's big reveal. Mrs. Rouncewell takes Lady Dedlock aside and tells her: 1) her missing son was just found, 2) he's in jail for the murder of Tulkinghorn, and 3) Mrs. Rouncewell is sure that Lady Dedlock has some information that could free him because 4) a letter just arrived at Chesney Wold saying "LADY DEDLOCK MURDERESS" on it. Lady Dedlock kind of collapses in her chair, and Mrs. Rouncewell leaves the room. In comes Guppy. He tells Lady Dedlock: 1) he hasn't been pursuing the mystery, but 2) Smallweed and the Chadbands have, and now 3) they are talking to Sir Dedlock and trying to blackmail him. A footman tells Lady Dedlock that, yes, people like that have been in the house, and now Sir Dedlock is alone in his study. Lady Dedlock freaks out - super-duper total breakdown, completely loses it. Then she writes a good-bye letter to Sir Dedlock, telling him she's guilty of everything except Tulkinghorn's murder. She leaves all her belongings behind and runs off.

Mrs. Bagnet brings Mrs. Rouncewell to George's prison cell, where mother and son are happily reunited after many years of separation. George consents to accept a defense lawyer. Mrs. Bagnet brings Mrs. Rouncewell to George's prison cell, where mother and son are happily reunited after many years of separation. George consents to accept a defense lawyer. When Mrs. Rouncewell goes to the Dedlock house, she tells Lady Dedlock that George is being held for Tulkinghorn's murder. She also shows Lady Dedlock a letter giving a printed account of the discovery of Tulkinghorn's body and bearing, under the account, Lady Dedlock's name and the word "murderess." Mr. Guppy arrives, warns her that Hawdon's letters, which he thought were destroyed, are now held by the Smallweeds, and he tells her further that Grandfather Smallweed will probably use them to try to extract money from her. When Guppy leaves, Lady Dedlock is seized with horror. Tulkinghorn, though dead, remains a menacing figure: Even in death, he pursues her. She writes a brief letter to Sir Leicester explaining her own motives and movements on the night of Tulkinghorn's murder. She states that she is innocent of Tulkinghorn's murder, but that she is not innocent of anything else that "you have heard, or will hear." Then she "veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money and exits the house.

The reunion of George Rouncewell and his mother ties up one of the loose ends of a subplot and provides another occasion for Dickens to provide his early readers with something many of them delighted in: the effusive expression of virtuous domestic sentiment. Once again Mr. Guppy, though still somewhat absurd, appears in a rather favorable light. Lady Dedlock follows the pattern so often found in classical tragedy: Because she lacks certain vital information , she makes a fatal decision. Her character, however, is not sufficiently deep or noble to create the compelling effect of high tragedy; she is a figure of pathos.

"Flight" The narrator relates events that happened before Bucket arrested Mademoiselle Hortense. He says that a chaise carrying Mrs. Rouncewell and Mrs. Bagnet makes its way from Lincolnshire to London. Mrs. Rouncewell is stunned because Mrs. Bagnet has figured out that Mrs. Rouncewell is George's mother. Mrs. Bagnet says she knew George's mother was alive because of the way he talked about her. One day she asked George why he was moody, and George told her that his mother was Mrs. Rouncewell of Chesney Wold. Mrs. Bagnet tells Mrs. Rouncewell she must help George prove he's innocent of the murder. At the prison, mother and son reunite. George apologizes for never writing after he left home and being a vagabond, especially since his brother is so successful. Mrs. Rouncefully forgives him fully. He asks Mrs. Rouncewell not to tell his brother he has returned, and she reluctantly agrees. George tells them that he's been writing up an account his role in the Tulkinghorn affair. The two women soon leave. Mrs. Rouncewell goes to the Dedlock home. She finds Lady Dedlock in Tulkinghorn's turret room and tells her that she's found her son and that he's in prison for Tulkinghorn's muder. She asks for Lady Dedlock's help and tells her she got a letter last night. She assures Lady Dedlock she told no one about the letter and implores her that if she knows anything to please reveal it and save George. When Mrs. Rouncewell leaves, Lady Dedlock reads the letter, which is actually an article about the murder with her name and the word Murderess written underneath. Mr. Guppy is announced. He tells Lady Dedlock that Esther had requested that he not take any further steps in investigating her past. He then tells her that Tulkinghorn had been working against him and that Guppy found it difficult not to disobey Esther's wishes. He asks if Lady Dedlock has received any strange visitors this morning, such as Miss Barbary's former maid or a man carried in a chair, and she says no. Guppy says they were indeed here. He says he has come to warn her that the letters he thought had been destroyed were not actually destroyed and that those aforementioned visitors were likely here to try and make money from them. Guppy then leaves. Lady Dedlock understands that her secret is no longer a secret. She leaves a note for Sir Leicester saying that she didn't murder Tulkinghorn but that she is guilty of everything else. She flees

Ada and Richard's hasty, secret marriage, along with Esther and Mr. Jarndyce's engagement, turns the once-happy foursome of Bleak House into two awkward pairings. Though Ada and Richard truly love each other, their alliance is plainly unwise. Richard has reduced himself to debt, a dismal apartment, a relationship with creepy Vholes, and an unhealthy obsession with the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit. Ada, young and blooming, is loyal to him but is too distraught to leave the comfort and warmth of Bleak House. Richard, furthermore, is exhausted and sickly. Esther, usually willing to celebrate any happiness, feels pity for Ada, crying for her just as she cried for herself when Mr. Jarndyce had proposed. Both women have loyal partners--romantic in Ada's case and deeply affectionate in Esther's--but neither partnership promises complete and total satisfaction. Inspector Bucket's elaborate investigation temporarily turns Bleak House into a detective novel. Bucket isn't a very prominent character until the narrator focuses on him in chapters 53 and 54, when the extent of his knowledge becomes clear. Canny and determined, Tulkinghorn hired Bucket to investigate Lady Dedlock, who Tulkinghorn believed had found her former lover. Bucket has amassed a number of clues, secrets, suspects, motives, and witnesses that seem not only to prove Tulkinghorn's suspicions but also to unmask Lady Dedlock as a murderer. When Bucket explains what he knows to Sir Leicester, the sprawling pieces of Bleak House--its large group of characters, their many secrets, and the weaving, disparate storylines--finally seem to come together into a cohesive whole. We get the sense that Dickens has been revealing clues slowly throughout the hundreds of pages that have passed so far. When Bucket unexpectedly arrests Mademoiselle Hortense instead of Lady Dedlock, the twist is surprising but somewhat anticlimactic; the violent murder was simply the crime of a jealous maid rather than a passionate act of desperation. Mrs. Rouncewell's reunion with George is the second mother-child reunion in the novel, and although the circumstances of the two reunions seem vastly different, they have many similarities. At first the reunions seem more different than similar. Unlike Lady Dedlock, Mrs. Rouncewell has always known her child was alive. Unlike Esther, George knows who his mother is and even where to find her. Yet beneath the surface, there are many similarities. For example, both mother-child pairs were separated because of shame: Esther was taken from Lady Dedlock because of the shameful circumstances of her birth, and George separated himself from Mrs. Rouncewell because he was ashamed of his roving, restless lifestyle. Both Lady Dedlock and Mrs. Rouncewell are also desperate to find their children, even though Mrs. Rouncewell has searched for years and Lady Dedlock has only recently learned Esther is alive. The reunions are also similarly emotional, with many tears and pleas for forgiveness. The intensity of these familial pursuits and reunions reveals the prominence of motherhood as a thematic thread throughout the novel.

Flight An emotional reunion of Mr. George and his mother, Mrs. Rouncewell, is orchestrated by Mrs. Bagnet. There is forgiveness and George's promise to defend himself with a lawyer. Then, Mrs. Rouncewell goes to Lady Dedlock with an anonymous letter she received with a newspaper clipping about the murder and "Lady Dedlock, murderess" underneath. She begs if her Ladyship knows anything about it to help her son George who is being held for the murder. This shock is succeeded by another. Guppy comes to Lady Dedlock to put her on her guard, to tell her the letters were not destroyed after all; they were found by Smallweed who was here earlier trying to collect money for them. Lady Dedlock breaks down, seeing that her husband now knows all, and fearing to be thought a murderess, she writes her husband a letter declaring her innocence of the murder and acknowledging the shame she has brought to his "generous devotion" . She must leave and say good-by. She veils herself, leaves all jewels and everything behind and rushes out into the night.

Commentary on Chapter LV This is a tragic set-up, with the wrong messengers appearing with the wrong information. Mrs. Rouncewell lets her know she may be wanted for murder. Guppy, for once, is trying to act honorably to help Lady Dedlock, but instead, lets her know that the letters are found and her husband knows about them. She flees, feeling trapped, when actually, Hortense has already been arrested, George has been released, and Sir Leicester, still lying in a stupor on the floor, wants only to forgive.


Pursuit

Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house
stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives
no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle,
doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers
with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly
bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating
creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the
eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging
carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk
into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries
bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a
spectacle for the angels.

The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before
its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair,
being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that
disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at
length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle
tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in;
seeing no one there, takes possession.

The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the
ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels
her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with
a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.
Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of
hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a
short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at
that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass
at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of
these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass
in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled
tree.

Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of
reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion.
Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors
are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not
found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her
letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is
doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another
world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living
languages, and all the dead, are as one to him.

They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put
ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day
has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous
breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the
candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change
begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even
his hand in token that he hears and comprehends.

He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat
infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies
upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of
himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been
thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word
he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were
something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers
sounds like what it is--mere jumble and jargon.

His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is
the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it.
After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes
signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first
understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants
and brings in a slate.

After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that
is not his, "Chesney Wold?"

No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library
this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to
London and is able to attend upon him.

"It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You
will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say
so." This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face.

After making a survey of the room and looking with particular
attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "My
Lady."

"My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and
don't know of your illness yet."

He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try
to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their
looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate
once more and writes "My Lady. For God's sake, where?" And makes an
imploring moan.

It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady
Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise.
She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it
twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be
seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a
swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his
faithful and attached old servant's arm. The doctors know that he is
best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof.

The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to
write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction
at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in
the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he
labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the
letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his
misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket.
Thank heaven! That's his meaning.

Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come
up?

There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning wish
to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of
every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket
appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his
high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this. I
hope you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account of the family
credit."

Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his
face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket's
eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is
still glancing over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, I understand you."

Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. "Full forgiveness. Find--" Mr.
Bucket stops his hand.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her. But my search after
her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost."

With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's
look towards a little box upon a table.

"Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it
with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure.
Take the notes out? So I will. Count 'em? That's soon done. Twenty
and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and
forty's one sixty. Take 'em for expenses? That I'll do, and render an
account of course. Don't spare money? No I won't."

The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket's interpretation on all
these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds
the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he
starts up, furnished for his journey.

"You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I
believe?" says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and
buttoning his coat.

"Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother."

"So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well,
then, I'll tell you something. You needn't be distressed no more.
Your son's all right. Now, don't you begin a-crying, because what
you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,
and you won't do that by crying. As to your son, he's all right, I
tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same.
He's discharged honourable; that's about what HE is; with no more
imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a
tidy one, I'LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He
conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he's a
fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a mother
and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan.
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me I'll go
through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right
or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found
what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on
your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you
better, and these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord, many other
family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of
time."

With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,
looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night
in quest of the fugitive.

His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms and look
all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The
rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in
his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental
inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with
himself, would be to see a sight--which nobody DOES see, as he is
particular to lock himself in.

"A spicy boudoir, this," says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner
furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. "Must have
cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must
have been hard put to it!"

Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and
jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,
and moralizes thereon.

"One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and
getting myself up for almac's," says Mr. Bucket. "I begin to think I
must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it."

Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner
drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can
scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a
white handkerchief.

"Hum! Let's have a look at YOU," says Mr. Bucket, putting down the
light. "What should YOU be kept by yourself for? What's YOUR motive?
Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? You've got a
mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?"

He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson."

"Oh!" says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. "Come,
I'll take YOU."

He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has
carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,
glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the
street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir
Leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest
coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be
driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a
scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the
principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of
the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he
knows him.

His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering
over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his
keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the
midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where
people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he
rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the
snow lies thin--for something may present itself to assist him,
anywhere--he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he
stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.

"Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back."

He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his
pipe.

"I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my
lad. I haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman.
Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died--that was the name, I
know--all right--where does she live?"

The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near
Oxford Street.

"You won't repent it, George. Good night!"

He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by
the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again,
and gets out in a cloud of steam again.

Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed,
rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and
comes down to the door in his dressing-gown.

"Don't be alarmed, sir." In a moment his visitor is confidential with
him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the
lock. "I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket.
Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson's. Found it
myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour
ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady
Dedlock?"

"Yes."

"There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come
out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit--apoplexy or
paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been
lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for
him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!"

Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks.

"I don't know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there's more and more
danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I'd give a hundred
pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr.
Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow
her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have
money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss
Summerson."

Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "Miss Summerson?"

"Now, Mr. Jarndyce"--Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest
attention all along--"I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane
heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen.
If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you
couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the
time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound
apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am
charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest
that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of
murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to
desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady,
answering to the description of a young lady that she has a
tenderness for--I ask no question, and I say no more than that--she
will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and
be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for'ard,
and I'll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come
up with her alone--a hard matter--and I'll do my best, but I don't
answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's getting on for one
o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth
a thousand pound now instead of a hundred."

This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be
questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to
Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual
principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping
his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the
gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr.
Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him
directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him
where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and
awaits her coming at the door.

There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.
Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many
solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.
But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he
perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places
down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object
drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a
drowning hold on his attention.

Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the
handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted
power to bring before him the place where she found it and the
night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child,
would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are
burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched
huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind,
where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the
gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of
human torture--traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a
lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and
driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all
companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably
dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at
the great door of the Dedlock mansion.

Anywho. Volumnia finds Sir Dedlock on the floor of the study. He's had a fit, can barely speak, and is communicating by writing on a piece of paper. Mrs. Rouncewell is taking care of him. He asks for Lady Dedlock, who can't be found, and is given her letter. He cries and moans after reading it, then asks for Bucket. He lets Bucket read the letter, then writes on his chalkboard, "Full forgiveness. Find---" . Bucket first tells Mrs. Rouncewell to take care of Sir Dedlock and not to worry about her son, because George has already been released. Then Bucket immediately takes off. First looking for some clues in Lady Dedlock's room, he finds Esther Summerson's handkerchief - and hey, what a good thing all handkerchiefs back then were monogrammed! Her name is written right on it. Bucket immediately remembers her from Gridley's deathbed and puts two and two together. He rides off to George Rouncewell's and gets Jarndyce's address. At Jarndyce's he asks to take Esther with him as they search for Lady Dedlock. His idea is that if she sees the two of them together, she'll be more likely to believe him when he says that Sir Dedlock has already forgiven her for everything.

Not long after Lady Dedlock has left the house, Volumnia discovers Sir Leicester unconscious on the floor of the library; he has had a stroke. Recovering somewhat but still unable to speak distinctly, he writes "My Lady" on a slate and is told that she has gone out. After reading her letter, he commissions Bucket to find her and give her his message: "Full forgiveness." The detective reassures old Mrs. Rouncewell that her son George is "discharged honourable," then he searches Lady Dedlock's room for clues that might help him locate her. He finds and keeps the signatured handkerchief that Esther left in the brickmaker's house, the one that Lady Dedlock discovered there. Bucket then goes to the shooting gallery and gets Esther's address from George. He then visits Mr. Jarndyce, explains his mission, and asks him to allow Esther to go with him in search of her mother. Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is wandering in the area of the brickmakers' kilns in St. Albans. Not long after Lady Dedlock has left the house, Volumnia discovers Sir Leicester unconscious on the floor of the library; he has had a stroke. Recovering somewhat but still unable to speak distinctly, he writes "My Lady" on a slate and is told that she has gone out. After reading her letter, he commissions Bucket to find her and give her his message: "Full forgiveness." The detective reassures old Mrs. Rouncewell that her son George is "discharged honourable," then he searches Lady Dedlock's room for clues that might help him locate her. He finds and keeps the signatured handkerchief that Esther left in the brickmaker's house, the one that Lady Dedlock discovered there. Bucket then goes to the shooting gallery and gets Esther's address from George. He then visits Mr. Jarndyce, explains his mission, and asks him to allow Esther to go with him in search of her mother. Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is wandering in the area of the brickmakers' kilns in St. Albans.

Bucket continues to be impressive as a skillful detective who is also a politic and warm-hearted human being. Sir Leicester continues to show only his better side. The story now turns into a worried, rather desperate rescue effort.

"Pursuit" The narrator says that Volumnia finds Sir Leicester sprawled on the floor of the library. She screams, causing a commotion and bringing servants running to help. Sir Leicester is much weaker and quieter than he was before. He can barely speak and writes notes to communicate. When he asks about Lady Dedlock, the doctors say she has gone out and doesn't yet know Sir Leicester is sick. They let Mrs. Rouncewell give Sir Leicester the letter from Lady Dedlock. Sir Leicester requests Bucket. He tells Bucket that he fully forgives Lady Dedlock and asks him to find her immediately. Before Bucket leaves, he reassures Mrs. Rouncewell that George will be fine and that her immediate concern must be attending to Sir Leicester. Bucket first inspects Lady Dedlock's chambers. In a drawer, he finds a white handkerchief with Esther's name on it. He rushes to George, who tells him Esther's address. When he reaches Esther's home, he shows the letter to Mr. Jarndyce and says he fears Lady Dedlock is going to kill herself. Bucket says he needs Esther to go with him on his search, and Mr. Jarndyce gets her. The narrator ruminates on where Lady Dedlock is and then says there is a figure wearing shabby clothes fleeing near the brick kilns

Lady Dedlock is Sir Leicester's greatest weakness, and the revelation of her secret personal history is enough to nearly destroy him. Bombastic, influential Sir Leicester collapses when he learns Lady Dedlock's secret, losing his ability to move and speak after suffering what appears to be a stroke. Suddenly bedridden, he is dependent on his subordinates to care for him and understand him. Although there are many tragedies in Bleak House, Jo's death among them, the fall of Sir Leicester may be the most affecting. We may see it as a tragedy caused by love: Lady Dedlock hid her secret to protect Sir Leicester and then fled to escape the wrath she expected, while Sir Leicester forgives her easily and fully despite her transgressions. He never has the chance to prove the depth of his devotion, nor does Lady Dedlock ever have the opportunity to see it. Their partnership has never been an obviously warm one, thanks in part to Lady Dedlock's carefully maintained haughtiness, but the tragic fall of Sir Leicester shows that there was passion in their marriage after all. Esther and Bucket's frantic nighttime pursuit of Lady Dedlock ratchets up the suspense of the novel, and Dickens skillfully raises the tension by switching between his two narrators more frequently than usual. The third-person narrator narrates chapter 56, describing Sir Leicester's sad state and then following Bucket as he calls for Esther in the middle of the night. Esther takes over the narration in chapter 57, and she leads us on their fast, feverish journey. The chapter ends in a rush, with Bucket making the unexpected decision to return to London. The third-person narrator takes over again in chapter 58, removing us from the nighttime journey and taking us back to Sir Leicester, who is waiting earnestly in his bed for news. In chapter 59, we're back out in the cold with Esther as the search continues and finally ends. This quick back-and-forth, which jerks us in and out of the action of the search, increases the suspense of the journey and raises the stakes. Esther is not the only one frantic to find Lady Dedlock; Sir Leicester, who has prepared Lady Dedlock's rooms and lit the fires, is perhaps even more desperate than she is. Dickens's use of two narrators in these chapters is perhaps more affecting than at any other point in the novel. Esther demonstrates a remarkable control over her narrative in chapters 59 and 60, proving once again that she is an agile storyteller and a confident guide through this sordid, bulky tale. Although she is narrating Bleak House from a point seven years in the future, she withholds information and feigns ignorance when doing so increases the dramatic effect. We've seen her do this with her feelings for Woodcourt, which increased the poignancy of Mr. Jarndyce's proposal. In this section, when Esther, Bucket, and Woodcourt finally find the woman they've been pursuing, who Esther believes is Jenny, she tells us she doesn't understand what Bucket is getting at when he explains that Jenny and Lady Dedlock switched clothes. When Esther sees that the woman is actually Lady Dedlock's body, we share her shock. She has successfully drawn us into her own disoriented confusion to make the story more intriguing.

Pursuit After Lady Dedlock has left, Cousin Volumnia finds Sir Leicester on the library floor. He is taken to bed, and Mrs. Rouncewell nurses him, to his great comfort. He has had a stroke and cannot speak, so he writes on a slate, "My Lady." They say she has gone out, and then give him her letter. He begins moaning and asks for Bucket, who is in the house. He lets him read the letter. He writes on the slate, "Full forgiveness. Find" . Bucket tells Mrs. Rouncewell her son is safe and "discharged honorable" , then goes to Lady Dedlock's room for clues and finds the handkerchief of Esther Summerson. He goes to George's shooting gallery, gets Esther's address in Oxford Street and asks Mr. Jarndyce to let Esther come with him in search of Lady Dedlock. Jarndyce reads her letter and asks Bucket what he thinks. He says it could be a suicide note. Esther goes with him on a chase that lasts over 24 hours in the dead of a winter storm.

Commentary on Chapter LVI Dickens skillfully builds our sympathy for Sir Leicester in these last chapters. He has been proud of his family name, but it is not his family name or shame that distresses him. Even in his collapsed state, he yearns for them to find his wife and convey his forgiveness and bring her home. He finds much comfort in having his housekeeper of fifty years nursing him. This is the old way of loyal retainers, who are like family. We cheer to have Bucket on the trail, for if anyone can find her, he can.