Esther's Narrative

I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the
door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to
speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or
two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester
Dedlock's. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door
who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of
affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find
her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my
entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this
general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of
alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could
make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to
recover my right mind until hours had passed.

But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or
any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted
with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and
also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr.
Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to
me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I
suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting
beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets.

His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me
that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without
confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,
chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom
he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with
her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I
had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to
consider--taking time to think--whether within my knowledge there was
any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to
confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of
no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He
came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of
mentioning my mother's name and with what my guardian had informed me
of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with
her unhappy story.

My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation,
that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on
again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few
moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite
willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough
to understand it.

We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a
by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket
took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now
past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police
officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like
people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the
place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and
calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any
attention.

A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he
whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised
together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket's subdued dictation. It was
a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket
brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was
very accurate indeed.

The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it
out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an
outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done
with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet
nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its
travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing
with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the
soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.

"Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?" he asked me as his eyes
met mine. "It's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out
in."

I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.

"It may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never
mind, miss."

"I pray to heaven it may end well!" said I.

He nodded comfortingly. "You see, whatever you do, don't you go and
fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may
happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the
better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet."

He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire
warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a
confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a
quarter to two when I heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "Now,
Miss Summerson," said he, "we are off, if you please!"

He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,
and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and
post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the
box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then
handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a
few directions to the driver, we rattled away.

I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great
rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all
idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the
river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside,
dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and
basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships.
At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which
the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my
companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several
men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the
mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I
could discern the words, "Found Drowned"; and this and an inscription
about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in
our visit to that place.

I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence
of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or
to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but
what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still
it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long
swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat
and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some
slippery steps--as if to look at something secret that he had to
show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after
turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared!

After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to
know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in
the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to
warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it
made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little
rush towards me. It never did so--and I thought it did so, hundreds
of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and
probably was less--but the thought shuddered through me that it would
cast my mother at the horses' feet.

Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant,
darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. "Don't you be
alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here," he
said, turning to me. "I only want to have everything in train and to
know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!"

We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note
of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging
from the general character of the streets. We called at another
office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During
the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion,
wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single
moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be
more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet,
he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted
past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a
face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look,
so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat
lines of shore--so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of
substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it
many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free
from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon
the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round
the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling
on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely
in upon me--a face rising out of the dreaded water.

Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at
length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave
the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to
Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we
changed and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country
was white with snow, though none was falling then.

"An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson," said Mr.
Bucket cheerfully.

"Yes," I returned. "Have you gathered any intelligence?"

"None that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered, "but it's
early times as yet."

He had gone into every late or early public-house where there
was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being
then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the
turnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money,
and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he
took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful
steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business
tone, "Get on, my lad!"

With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we
were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of
these houses and handed me in a cup of tea.

"Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you good. You're beginning to get
more yourself now, ain't you?"

I thanked him and said I hoped so.

"You was what you may call stunned at first," he returned; "and Lord,
no wonder! Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all right. She's on
ahead."

I don't know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but
he put up his finger and I stopped myself.

"Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I
heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but
couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked
her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us
now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you
wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can
catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there
you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!"

We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I
was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the
night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the
carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready,
my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.

"As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see," he
observed, "I should like to know whether you've been asked for by any
stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I
don't much expect it, but it might be."

As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye--the
day was now breaking--and reminded me that I had come down it one
night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and
poor Jo, whom he called Toughey.

I wondered how he knew that.

"When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said
Mr. Bucket.

Yes, I remembered that too, very well.

"That was me," said Mr. Bucket.

Seeing my surprise, he went on, "I drove down in a gig that afternoon
to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came
out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your
little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an
inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he
was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I
observed you bringing him home here."

"Had he committed any crime?" I asked.

"None was charged against him," said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off
his hat, "but I suppose he wasn't over-particular. No. What I wanted
him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady
Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome
as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased
Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have
him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made
an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and
go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn't
catch him coming back again."

"Poor creature!" said I.

"Poor enough," assented Mr. Bucket, "and trouble enough, and well
enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on
my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure
you."

I asked him why. "Why, my dear?" said Mr. Bucket. "Naturally there
was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a
yard and a half of it, and a remnant over."

Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion
at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me
to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.
With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of
indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that
we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the
garden-gate.

"Ah!" said Mr. Bucket. "Here we are, and a nice retired place it is.
Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping,
that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They're early
with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what
you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see
'em; you never know what they're up to if you don't know that. And
another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the
kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being
secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose."

We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely
at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the
windows.

"Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room
when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" he inquired, glancing at
Mr. Skimpole's usual chamber.

"You know Mr. Skimpole!" said I.

"What do you call him again?" returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his
ear. "Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered what his name might be.
Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?"

"Harold," I told him.

"Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harold," said Mr. Bucket, eyeing
me with great expression.

"He is a singular character," said I.

"No idea of money," observed Mr. Bucket. "He takes it, though!"

I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew
him.

"Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson," he replied. "Your mind will
be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and
I'll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where
Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask
for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first,
if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at
that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I
have had a look at him, thinks I, you're the man for me. So I
smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after
they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that
charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I
pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote
well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without
causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows
in the gayest way, 'It's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my
friend, because I'm a mere child in such matters and have no idea of
money.' Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and
being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round
a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and
looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'But I don't know the value
of these things. What am I to DO with this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I.
'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right
change, I shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord, you never saw such
a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find
Toughey, and I found him."

I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole
towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish
innocence.

"Bounds, my dear?" returned Mr. Bucket. "Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson,
I'll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful
when you are happily married and have got a family about you.
Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in
all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are
dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to
you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person
is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have
got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a
poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a
company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this
rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I
never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution
to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,
and so go back to our business."

I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than
it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household
were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by
my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be
doubted that this was the truth.

"Then, Miss Summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at
the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries
there I leave to you, if you'll be so good as to make 'em. The
naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own
way."

We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it
shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew
me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed
me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in
another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin
of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows
of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,
which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I
pushed it open.

There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying
asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead
child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the
men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket
followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently
knew him.

I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I
knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool
near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that
I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I
became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to
begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.

"Liz," said I, "I have come a long way in the night and through the
snow to inquire after a lady--"

"Who has been here, you know," Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the
whole group with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the
young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know."

"And who told YOU as there was anybody here?" inquired Jenny's
husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now
measured him with his eye.

"A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen
waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," Mr. Bucket
immediately answered.

"He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the
man.

"He's out of employment, I believe," said Mr. Bucket apologetically
for Michael Jackson, "and so gets talking."

The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her
hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have
spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump
of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck
the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an
oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.

"I should like to have seen Jenny very much," said I, "for I am sure
she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very
anxious indeed--you cannot think how anxious--to overtake. Will Jenny
be here soon? Where is she?"

The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another
oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to
Jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
latter turned his shaggy head towards me.

"I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd
me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it's
curious they can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine made if
I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much
complain of you as of some others, and I'm agreeable to make you a
civil answer, though I give notice that I'm not a-going to be drawed
like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won't. Where is she?
She's gone up to Lunnun."

"Did she go last night?" I asked.

"Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night," he answered with a
sulky jerk of his head.

"But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to
her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as
to tell me," said I, "for I am in great distress to know."

"If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm--" the
woman timidly began.

"Your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow
emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot don't concern
you."

After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me
again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.

"Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady
come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell you wot the lady
said to her. She said, 'You remember me as come one time to talk to
you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember
me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had
left?' Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young
lady up at the house now? No, she warn't up at the house now. Well,
then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as
we might think it, and could she rest herself where you're a setten
for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went--it
might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time
by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd.
She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun,
and t'other went right from it. That's all about it. Ask this man. He
heerd it all, and see it all. He knows."

The other man repeated, "That's all about it."

"Was the lady crying?" I inquired.

"Devil a bit," returned the first man. "Her shoes was the worse, and
her clothes was the worse, but she warn't--not as I see."

The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her
husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his
hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute
his threat if she disobeyed him.

"I hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said I, "how the
lady looked."

"Come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "You hear what she says. Cut
it short and tell her."

"Bad," replied the woman. "Pale and exhausted. Very bad."

"Did she speak much?"

"Not much, but her voice was hoarse."

She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.

"Was she faint?" said I. "Did she eat or drink here?"

"Go on!" said the husband in answer to her look. "Tell her and cut it
short."

"She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and
tea. But she hardly touched it."

"And when she went from here," I was proceeding, when Jenny's husband
impatiently took me up.

"When she went from here, she went right away nor'ard by the high
road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. Now,
there's the end. That's all about it."

I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and
was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took
my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he
looked full at her.

"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me as we walked quickly away.
"They've got her ladyship's watch among 'em. That's a positive fact."

"You saw it?" I exclaimed.

"Just as good as saw it," he returned. "Else why should he talk about
his 'twenty minutes past' and about his having no watch to tell the
time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as
that. If he comes to half-hours, it's as much as HE does. Now, you
see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think
she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should
she give it him for?"

He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,
appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his
mind.

"If time could be spared," said Mr. Bucket, "which is the only thing
that can't be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;
but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to under present
circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any
fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and
scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that
ill uses her through thick and thin. There's something kept back.
It's a pity but what we had seen the other woman."

I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt
sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.

"It's possible, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,
"that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and
it's possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don't
come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards.
Now, I don't take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don't see my way to the
usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is
for'ard--straight ahead--and keeping everything quiet!"

We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my
guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.
The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
were on the road again in a few minutes.

It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air
was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall
that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it
was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it
churned--with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells--under
the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped
and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a
standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first
stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to
dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.

I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under
those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an
unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
companion's better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this
time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was
engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing
people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running
in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and
shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,
wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose
time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady
face and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"

When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the
stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off
him--plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been
doing frequently since we left Saint Albans--and spoke to me at the
carriage side.

"Keep up your spirits. It's certainly true that she came on here,
Miss Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and
the dress has been seen here."

"Still on foot?" said I.

"Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point
she's aiming at, and yet I don't like his living down in her own part
of the country neither."

"I know so little," said I. "There may be some one else nearer here,
of whom I never heard."

"That's true. But whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying, my dear;
and don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my
lad!"

The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,
and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never
seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had
been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great
duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free
from the anxiety under which I then laboured.

As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost
confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,
but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of
one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of
coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had
seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their
replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of
his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but
he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"

At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track
of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,
he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an
unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This
corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at
direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a
quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to
be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the
next stage might set us right again.

The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.
There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable
substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before
I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the
carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the
horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to
refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.

It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On
one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were
unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,
and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.
Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off
in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and
its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire
glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems
of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the
thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the
motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now
welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.

I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered
that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was
some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the
fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no
further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a
tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her
words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.

A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all
so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.
Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when
a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was
very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast
and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made
some recompense.

Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came
rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,
comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,
the youngest daughter--a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the
first married, they had told me--got upon the carriage step, reached
in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think
of her to this hour as my friend.

The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright
and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and
again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with
toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had
been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the
box--I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw
him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco--was
as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to
any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark
lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to
the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that
I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,
but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.

We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not
recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I
knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he
had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back
in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an
excited and quite different man.

"What is it?" said I, starting. "Is she here?"

"No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody's here. But I've got
it!"

The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in
ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his
breath before he spoke to me.

"Now, Miss Summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron,
"don't you be disappointed at what I'm a-going to do. You know me.
I'm Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We've come a long way;
never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"

There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the
stables to know if he meant up or down.

"Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!"

"Up?" said I, astonished. "To London! Are we going back?"

"Miss Summerson," he answered, "back. Straight back as a die. You
know me. Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other, by G----"

"The other?" I repeated. "Who?"

"You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll follow her. Bring those two
pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!"

"You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not
abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her
to be in!" said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.

"You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look
alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the
next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four
on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!"

These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them
caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me
than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted
man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to
with great speed.

"My dear," said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,
"--you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar--don't you fret and worry
yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;
but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?"

I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of
deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?
Could I not go forward by myself in search of--I grasped his hand
again in my distress and whispered it to him--of my own mother.

"My dear," he answered, "I know, I know, and would I put you wrong,
do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?"

What could I say but yes!

"Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me
for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
Now, are you right there?"

"All right, sir!"

"Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"

We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing
up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a
waterwheel.

A Wintry Day and Night

Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house
carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There
are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the
hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;
and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself
exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of
doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire,
but is expected to return presently.

Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.
It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that
poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears,
my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of
five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something
wrong at the Dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. One of the
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised
of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the
Lords on Sir Leicester's application for a bill of divorce.

At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss's the
mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,
the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,
albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured
there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly
understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.
"Our people, Mr. Jones," said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in
question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are sheep--mere sheep.
Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those
two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock." So,
likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing
where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they
(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring
principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer
of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "Why yes, sir, there
certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed
among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk
about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject into vogue with
one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole.
Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of
any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of
themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being
perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You'll find,
sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If
it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when
I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my
business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like
a clock, sir."

Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into
Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards' time,
it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables,
which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long
rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the
effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in
the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received
in turf-circles.

At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and
among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the
prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it?
How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the
genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new
manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite
indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found
to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never
came out before--positively say things! William Buffy carries one of
these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House,
where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to
keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the
Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under
the corner of his wig) cries, "Order at the bar!" three times without
making an impression.

And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being
vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr.
Sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know
nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend
that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with
the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl,
and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at
second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to
fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among
these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters
on such majestic crutches!

So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?

Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with
difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest,
and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old
enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he
seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be
moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement
weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving
snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole
wintry day.

Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is
at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he
would write and whispers, "No, he has not come back yet, Sir
Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a
little time gone yet."

He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow
again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and
fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy
whirl of white flakes and icy blots.

He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet
far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should
be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good
fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself.
He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a
heavy heart obeys.

"For I dread, George," the old lady says to her son, who waits below
to keep her company when she has a little leisure, "I dread, my dear,
that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls."

"That's a bad presentiment, mother."

"Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear."

"That's worse. But why, mother?"

"When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me--and I may
say at me too--as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked
her down."

"Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother."

"No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's going on for sixty year that I
have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before.
But it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is
breaking up."

"I hope not, mother."

"I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in
this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless
to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be.
But the step on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it
has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on."

"Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not."

"Ah, so do I, George," the old lady returns, shaking her head and
parting her folded hands. "But if my fears come true, and he has to
know it, who will tell him!"

"Are these her rooms?"

"These are my Lady's rooms, just as she left them."

"Why, now," says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a
lower voice, "I begin to understand how you come to think as you do
think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are
fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,
and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows
where."

He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,
so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper
what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a
hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,
where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces
of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to
reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and
vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and
colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely
exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates
and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that
let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is
a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.

The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are
complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.
Rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge
pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent
comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not
being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter,
has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and
consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of
the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at
her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "He
is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has
indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."

Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old
housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,
sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and
listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his
old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old
picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the
silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "Who will tell him!"

He has been under his valet's hands this morning to be made
presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He
is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual
manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a
responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to
his hand. It is necessary--less to his own dignity now perhaps than
for her sake--that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much
himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock,
is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to
prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his
present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously.

The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long
continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon
Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of
undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by
any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell
on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures
she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as
what's his name, her favourite Life Guardsman--the man she dotes on,
the dearest of creatures--who was killed at Waterloo.

Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares
about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it
necessary to explain.

"Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my
youngest. I have found him. He has come home."

Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "George? Your son
George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?"

The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester."

Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long
gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he
think, "Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after
this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in
his?"

It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he
does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be
understood.

"Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?"

"It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being
well enough to be talked to of such things."

Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that
nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell's son and that
she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth
enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir
Leicester as soon as he got better.

"Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester,

Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the
doctor's injunctions, replies, in London.

"Where in London?"

Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.

"Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly."

The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester,
with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to
receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling
sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity
of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises
there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his
hearing wheels.

He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor
surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper
son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,
squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily
ashamed of himself.

"Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!" exclaims Sir
Leicester. "Do you remember me, George?"

The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that
sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a
little helped by his mother, he replies, "I must have a very bad
memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you."

"When I look at you, George Rouncewell," Sir Leicester observes with
difficulty, "I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold--I remember
well--very well."

He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he
looks at the sleet and snow again.

"I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester," says the trooper, "but would you
accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir
Leicester, if you would allow me to move you."

"If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good."

The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,
and turns him with his face more towards the window. "Thank you. You
have your mother's gentleness," returns Sir Leicester, "and your own
strength. Thank you."

He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains
at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.

"Why did you wish for secrecy?" It takes Sir Leicester some time to
ask this.

"Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I--I should
still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed--which I hope you
will not be long--I should still hope for the favour of being allowed
to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very
hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very
creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of
subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir
Leicester, that I am not much to boast of."

"You have been a soldier," observes Sir Leicester, "and a faithful
one."

George makes his military bow. "As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I
have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."

"You find me," says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted
towards him, "far from well, George Rouncewell."

"I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester."

"I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a
sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens," making an endeavour
to pass one hand down one side, "and confuses," touching his lips.

George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The
different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the
younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold
arise before them both and soften both.

Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his
own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into
silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.
George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and
places him as he desires to be. "Thank you, George. You are another
self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold,
George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very
familiar." He has put Sir Leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder
in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again
as he says these words.

"I was about to add," he presently goes on, "I was about to add,
respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a
slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean
that there was any difference between us (for there has been none),
but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances
important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while,
of my Lady's society. She has found it necessary to make a journey--I
trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible?
The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing
them."

Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself
with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a
minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious
and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his
purpose enables him to make it.

"Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence--and in the
presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth
and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son
George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in
the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold--in case I should relapse,
in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech
and the power of writing, though I hope for better things--"

The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest
agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with
his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.

"Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to
witness--beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly--that I am
on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever
of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest
affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to
herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will
be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me."

Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions
to the letter.

"My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too
superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is
surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it
be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound
mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made
in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am
on unaltered terms with her, and I recall--having the full power to
do it if I were so disposed, as you see--no act I have done for her
advantage and happiness."

His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has
often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious
and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant
shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own
pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing
less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the
commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born
gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both
children of the dust shine equally.

Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows
and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes
his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds.
In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their
acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him.
Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or
two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his
mother's chair.

The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into
which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze
begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The
gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the
pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their
source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like
fiery fish out of water--as they are. The world, which has been
rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, "to inquire," begins
to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with
all the last new modes, as already mentioned.

Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great
pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for
doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it
is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will
be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not
dark enough yet.

His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to
uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.

"Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "I
must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and
praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and
waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and
light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The
church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and
the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just
the same."

"I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak--and she has been so long
gone."

"Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet."

"But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!"

He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.

She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon
him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.
Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then
gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at
the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered
self-command, "As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being
confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the
room!" When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left
to him to listen.

But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when
a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and
being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as
it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.

Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the
streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there
are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the
frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this
wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is
like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in
this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that,
and all is heavier than before.

The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to
go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and
George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily
on--or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and
three o'clock--they find a restless craving on him to know more about
the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly
every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his
march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best
report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling
and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge.

Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase--the
second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly
room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester
banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard
planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black
tea--is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among
them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in
the event, as she expresses it, "of anything happening" to Sir
Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that
the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in
the known world.

An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to
bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come
forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her
fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost,
particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one
who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being
not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who,
impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very
sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances
to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to
nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of
countenance.

The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the
course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company
both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the
small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both
make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other
times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and
dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock,
sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into
the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian
genius the maid.

"How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?" inquires Volumnia, adjusting
her cowl over her head.

"Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill,
and he even wanders a little sometimes."

"Has he asked for me?" inquires Volumnia tenderly.

"Why, no, I can't say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to
say."

"This is a truly sad time, Mr. George."

"It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock," quoth the maid
sharply.

But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted
at a moment's notice. She never should forgive herself "if anything
was to happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on
the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and
not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly
declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a
merit of not having "closed an eye"--as if she had twenty or
thirty--though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having
most indisputably opened two within five minutes.

But when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank,
Volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to
strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for
the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact,
howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her,
as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper
reappears with his, "Hadn't you better go to bed, miss?" and when the
maid protests, more sharply than before, "You had a deal better go to
bed, Miss Dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "Do with me what you
think best!"

Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the
door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it
best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly,
these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the
house to himself.

There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the
eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips
the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of
the great door--under it, into the corners of the windows, into every
chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is
falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the
skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's
Walk, on the stone floor below.

The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur
of a great house--no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold--goes up the
stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's
length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks,
and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so
strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space;
thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind;
thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and
the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the
master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, "Who will tell
him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see
something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his
hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the
darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again,
blank as the oppressive silence.

"All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?"

"Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester."

"No word of any kind?"

The trooper shakes his head.

"No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?"

But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down
without looking for an answer.

Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George
Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder
of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed
wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first
late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless,
and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as
if it cried out, "Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who
will tell him!"

Esther's Narrative

It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London
did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with
streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition
than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the
thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never
slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than
the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had
stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through
streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become
entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been
always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard
any variation in his cool, "Get on, my lads!"

The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey
back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped
to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very
few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we
came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into
Islington.

I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected
all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther
behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be
right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following
this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing
it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and
what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also
that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long
dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.

We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My
companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with
splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the
carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take
it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from
the rest.

"Why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "How wet you are!"

I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way
into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen
horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated
my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew
him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his
stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it
out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and
comfortable.

"Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after
I was shut up. "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a
little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've
got a motive. Ain't you?"

I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I
should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence
in him.

"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you
only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after
what I've experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! You're no trouble at
all. I never see a young woman in any station of society--and I've
seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have conducted
yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you
know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly; "you're a
pattern."

I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no
hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.

"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game,
and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect.
She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."

With these encouraging words--they really were encouraging to me
under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon the box,
and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor
have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and
worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I
was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such
streets, and we never failed to do so.

Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger
building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at
offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I
saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by
an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of
his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various
dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would
be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within
narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now
tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go.
At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one
of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of
nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking
very busy and very attentive.

"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever
comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further
caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and
that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to
ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?"

Of course I got out directly and took his arm.

"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take
time."

Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the
street, I thought I knew the place. "Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"

"It looks like Chancery Lane."

"And was christened so, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.

We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I
heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and
as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming
towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and
stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an
exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his
voice very well.

It was so unexpected and so--I don't know what to call it, whether
pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish wandering
journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange
country.

"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in
such weather!"

He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some
uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I
told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--but then I
was obliged to look at my companion.

"Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt"--he had caught the name from me--"we
are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket."

Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off
his cloak and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too,"
said Mr. Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."

"May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me
or to my companion.

"Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of
course you may."

It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped
in the cloak.

"I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting
with him since ten o'clock last night."

"Oh, dear me, he is ill!"

"No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed
and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes--and Ada
sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came
straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,
and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though
God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him
until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is
now, I hope!"

His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected
devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had
inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate
all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it
had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the
change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall
be a sacred one!"

We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr.
Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business
takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What,
you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.

"Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place."

"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then you will be so good as to let
me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have
half a word with him?"

The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing
silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my
saying I heard some one crying.

"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."

"Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has
'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I
want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to
reason somehow."

"At all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, Mr.
Bucket," said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night,
sir."

"Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a
moment."

All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I
could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light
produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.
The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,
leaving us standing in the street.

"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on
your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so."

"You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of
my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."

"I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as
I can fully respect it."

"I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how
sacredly you keep your promise."

After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.
Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to
come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr.
Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a
medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be
done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I
particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about
her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to
handle without hurting."

We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
meekly.

"Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will
excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The
back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing,
to a frightful extent!"

We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.
Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.

"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "to
wave--not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear--hostilities for
one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."

She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
looked particularly hard at me.

"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not
unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street,
at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I
was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather
not be told."

He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I
appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.
Bucket took the matter on himself.

"Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go
along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster--"

"My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I
shall be charged with that next."

"And to hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're
asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a
man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of
heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good
as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me
have it as soon as ever you can?"

As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire
and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,
talking all the time.

"Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look
from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether.
She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her
generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going
to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat
and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.
Snagsby. "Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman
possessing what you may call charms, you know--'Believe Me, if All
Those Endearing,' and cetrer--you're well acquainted with the song,
because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are
strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to give you
confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it."

Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
what did Mr. Bucket mean.

"What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that
all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the
letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it
must be; "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello
acted. That's the tragedy for you."

Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.

"Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't
look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I
tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an
intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you
come to that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect
where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't
you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."

Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
at the time.

"And Toughey--him as you call Jo--was mixed up in the same business,
and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the
same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge
of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,
deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and
the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no
other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts
her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed
head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.
Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"

Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens.
Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a
wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your
maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes
a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do
you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that
maid-servant--knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing
will bring 'em on--in that surprising manner and with that severity
that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
hanging upon that girl's words!"

He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped
my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.
Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.

"Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket,
rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady
in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to
that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your
swiftest and best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the
door. "Now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"

"Quite," said I.

"Whose writing is that?"

It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of
paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed
to me at my guardian's.

"You know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it
to me, do! But be particular to a word."

It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
follows:

   I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the
   dear one, if I could, once more--but only to see her--not
   to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other
   object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the
   mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,
   she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the
   dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's
   consent I bought, but her help was freely given.

"'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested
there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right."

The next was written at another time:

   I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and
   I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no
   purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am
   saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and
   fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but
   I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was
   right that all that had sustained me should give way at
   once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.

"Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."

Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost
in the dark:

   I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon
   forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing
   about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part
   with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get
   so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.

Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon
as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."

I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I
heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what
passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where
the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these
points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have
remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.

The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.
They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might
have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I
kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my
shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into
tears.

"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for
indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble
you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter
than I could tell you in an hour."

She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she
didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!

"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."

"Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed,
Mrs. Snagsby."

"I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"

"I had been out on an errand, dear lady--long after it was
dark--quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking
person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me
coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.
And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about
here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I
do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm
to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"

It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her--which she did, I
must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she could be got
beyond this.

"She could not find those places," said I.

"No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And
she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if
you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I
know!"

"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say.
"I hope I should."

"And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with
wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said
to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her
which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I
told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far
from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."

As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket
received this with a look which I could not separate from one of
alarm.

"Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her
hands. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying
ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff--that
you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby--that frightened me so,
Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"

"You are so much better now," sald I. "Pray, pray tell me more."

"Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear
lady, because I have been so ill."

Angry with her, poor soul!

"There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to
find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with
eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.
And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was
to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded
and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the
messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no
harm, and she said no--no harm. And so I took it from her, and she
said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and
consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and
went."

"And did she go--"

"Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "Yes! She went the
way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me
from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."

Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and
immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I
said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better
with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"

I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that
it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the
street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling
and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled
people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the
clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of
blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the
courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor
girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my
hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained
house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great
water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the
air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.

At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one
lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly
struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground--a
dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where
I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in
by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose
walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the
gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and
splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a
woman lying--Jenny, the mother of the dead child.

I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me
with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to
the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did
so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.

"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They
changed clothes at the cottage."

They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my
mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no
meaning to them in any other connexion.

"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one
that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and
then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"

I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what
it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead
child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately
spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,
senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could
give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide
us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to
this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could
not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that
moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not
comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face.
I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to
keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a
reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.

I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"

"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They
have a higher right than ours."

I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,
put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my
mother, cold and dead.

Bucket and Esther search in vain for Lady Dedlock. They stop at the police station and go through the docks, looking for her. At St Alban's they learn, in a tea shop, that a woman like Lady Dedlock has passed on ahead. As they search for Lady Dedlock, Esther and Bucket discuss the plot. A further mystery is cleared up when Bucket admits that he removed Jo from Bleak House stables to keep Lady Dedlock's secret quiet. Also, Esther learns that Skimpole accepted a bribe to help Bucket. They look for Jenny, who they think might have seen Lady Dedlock. Jenny redirects them back into the city of London. Meanwhile, Sir Leicester waits, ill in bed, for the return of Lady Dedlock. He repeatedly says that they are on "unaltered terms," and that he wants her back no matter what. The fashionable gossip is in a flurry about the Dedlocks. George Rouncewell comes back to the Dedlock house to see his mother, and helps greatly with Sir Leicester. They remember being much younger men at Chesney Wold together, and there is a kind of friendship between them. George is employed in helping Sir Leicester move, get up, and generally "patrol" the house, waiting for Lady Dedlock's return. Mrs. Rouncewell fortells that Lady Dedlock will never return. In Chapter 59, Esther and Bucket rush back to London in the middle of the night They search the poorer streets of London, but they pass into Chancery lane and meet, serendipidously, Allan Woodcourt, who has been tending to Richard . Bucket takes them to Snagsby's, to get a letter from Guster. Allan fetches the letter from Guster, who, predictaby, is having a fit. The detective, who has become the voice of reason for all people, now lectures Mrs. Snagsby on the futility of being jealous of Mr. Snagsby. The letter obtained, Esther reads that her mother has chosen the place she wants to die. Guster says she had met a very ill-dressed woman who asked to find the pauper's burying ground where Nemo was laid to rest. Bucket and Esther rush to the gate of the burying ground, and find a body that looks like Jenny's. However, is is Lady Dedlock, already dead. Esther is unbelieving at first, but she must believe when she turns the face to her and sees it is her mother's.

This is a typical ride-to-the-rescue Victorian plot device, but the rescuers arrive too late.  Esther is dragged about by the kindly Bucket, giving Dickens the opportunity both to sustain suspense over three chapters and to reveal many mysteries through their conversation: how Bucket solved the murder, how he has been quietly influencing events for a long time , etc.  Through these revelations, Skimpole is exposed again as a heartless sponger, and Bucket is set up as a fount of wisdom about humankind. Sir Leicester has a touching, but restrained, reunion with George, and the remembrance of them both as younger men comforts him.  Sir Leicester has made the biggest transformation of any character in the novel, from bigoted and hidebound aristocrat to loving, infirm, forgiving husband.  George finally seems to feel at home, and has hope for his own life for the first time in ages.  He has never been a man of the city, truly, as he told Phil Squod back in the shooting gallery, and would like very much to go back to the country. Yet another Dickensian coincidence occurs as Allan shows up at just the right moment moves the plot along.  Guster, however, as a main character in an important plot point is a surprise.  It is to be hoped that Bucket's advice to Mrs. Snagsby will be heeded. The finding of Lady Dedlock already dead is a forgone conclusion.  She had essentially committed suicide by exposure, out of shame and despair.  Esther is at once moved and saddened, but one cannot help thinking that perhaps she saw her mother as selfish.  She could have lived and been some kind of mother to Esther, if she had chosen. Indeed, her death is to a great degree unnecessary, as she is wholly exonorated of murder and wholly forgiven by Sir Leicester at the time.  We wonder whether Lady Dedlock is driven as much by an unrelenting draw toward tragedy -- a personal need to suffer, die, and escape the burdens of her stoic front -- as by actual pressures of shame and disgrace.  Her death, ironically, seems somewhat selfish in this light: a final melodramatic escape to cap a life of steely, staged, miserable restraint.  It thus mirrors to some degree Krook's spontaneous combustion. Dickens wraps up this part of the story, with its confusing story threads, admirably.  We are left with Esther's loss of her mother, and the only suspense left  is in how Esther will bear it.