Springing a Mine

Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and
prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt
and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony,
he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of
severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a
foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and
marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these
strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his
familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just to mention
quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready
for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned that
Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the
library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and
stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the
blazing coals.

Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,
but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he
might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred
guineas certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high
reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a
masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket
when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes
slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in
which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the
idea, a touch of compassion.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later
than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the
indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much
for me. I am subject to--gout"--Sir Leicester was going to say
indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket
palpably knows all about it--"and recent circumstances have brought
it on."

As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,
Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large
hands on the library-table.

"I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes
to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely
as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would
be interested--"

"Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket with his
head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear
like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. You will
presently see that we can't be too private. A lady, under the
circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of
society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to
myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can't
be too private."

"That is enough."

"So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket resumes,
"that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in
the door."

"By all means." Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that
precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of
habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
from the outerside.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I
wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed
it and collected proof against the person who did this crime."

"Against the soldier?"

"No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."

Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, "Is the man in custody?"

Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."

Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,
"Good heaven!"

"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket begins, standing
over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the
forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare
you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say
that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you
are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman
is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly
and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against
almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
If there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your
family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away
to Julius Caesar--not to go beyond him at present--have borne that
blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and
you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family
credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."

Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,
sits looking at him with a stony face.

"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "thus preparing
you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to
anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many
characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less
don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board
that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken
place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move
whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move
according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put
out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family
affairs."

"I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester after a
silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which I hope is not
necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so
good as to go on. Also"--Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow
of his figure--"also, to take a seat, if you have no objection."

None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.
"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come
to the point. Lady Dedlock--"

Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely.
Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.

"Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally admired. That's what her
ladyship is; she's universally admired," says Mr. Bucket.

"I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns stiffly, "my
Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."

"So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but--it's impossible."

"Impossible?"

Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I
have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns
on."

"Officer," retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering
lip, "you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to
overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring
my Lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility--upon
your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a name for common persons
to trifle with!"

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more."

"I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!" Glancing at
the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling
from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way
with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that
the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and
suspicions of Lady Dedlock."

"If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir--which he never did--I
would have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his
hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he
stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is
slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes
his head.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and
close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I
can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he
long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the
sight of some handwriting--in this very house, and when you yourself,
Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present--the existence, in great poverty,
of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and
who ought to have been her husband." Mr. Bucket stops and
deliberately repeats, "Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt
about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards
died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and
his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries
and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in
the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed
me to reckon up her ladyship--if you'll excuse my making use of the
term we commonly employ--and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I
confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a
witness who had been Lady Dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the
shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown
to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the
way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying
that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.
All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and
through your own Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr.
Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and
that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the
matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after
he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the
intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose
black mantle with a deep fringe to it."

Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is
probing the life-blood of his heart.

"You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from
me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any
difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no use, that
Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as
you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she
knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, why do I relate all this?"

Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a
single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes
his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,
though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair,
that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed
is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness,
and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with
now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to
utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence,
soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend
why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn
should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this
distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible
intelligence.

"Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket, "put it
to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you
think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll find,
or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the
intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered
it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to
understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very
morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to
say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might
wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?"

True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive
sounds, says, "True." At this juncture a considerable noise of voices
is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the
library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he
draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, "Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken
air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut
down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now
in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet--on the
family account--while I reckon 'em up? And would you just throw in a
nod when I seem to ask you for it?"

Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can, the
best you can!" and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of
the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly
die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury
and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who
bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another
man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in
an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and
locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the
sacred precincts with an icy stare.

"Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr. Bucket
in a confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I
am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from
his breast-pocket, "is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it
ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old
gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your name is; I know it well."

"Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries Mr. Smallweed in a
shrill loud voice.

"You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts
Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.

"No!"

"Why, they killed him," says Mr. Bucket, "on account of his having so
much cheek. Don't YOU get into the same position, because it isn't
worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf
person, are you?"

"Yes," snarls Mr. Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."

"That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain't
here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I'll not
only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says Mr.
Bucket. "This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?"

"Name of Chadband," Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a
much lower key.

"Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr.
Bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it.
Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?"

"And Mrs. Snagsby," Mr. Smallweed introduces.

"Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says Mr. Bucket.
"Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?"

"Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr. Smallweed asks, a
little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.

"Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in
presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come."

Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment's counsel with
him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of
oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says
aloud, "Yes. You first!" and retires to his former place.

"I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather
Smallweed then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he
was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was
own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come
into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all his effects.
They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters
belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a
shelf in the side of Lady Jane's bed--his cat's bed. He hid all
manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and
got 'em, but I looked 'em over first. I'm a man of business, and I
took a squint at 'em. They was letters from the lodger's sweetheart,
and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a common name, Honoria,
is it? There's no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh,
no, I don't think so! Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the same
hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don't think so!"

Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his
triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I'm shaken
all to pieces!"

"Now, when you're ready," says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his
recovery, "to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know."

"Haven't I come to it, Mr. Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed.
"Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his
ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come,
then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it
don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I
won't have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em over to my friend
and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else."

"Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says Mr.
Bucket.

"I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you
what we want--what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more
painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the
interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George
the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice,
and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man."

"Now I tell you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his
manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary
fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have
my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half
a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more
painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do
you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out and put
it on the arm that fired that shot?"

Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is
that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize.
Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.

"The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the
murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and
I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long,
if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say
to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know
who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the
packet?"

Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.
Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it
as the same.

"What have you got to say next?" asks Mr. Bucket. "Now, don't open
your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it."

"I want five hundred pound."

"No, you don't; you mean fifty," says Mr. Bucket humorously.

It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.

"That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider
(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says
Mr. Bucket--Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head--"and you ask me
to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an
unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than
that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?"

Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.

"Then," says Mr. Bucket, "let's hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time
I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he
was in all respects, as ever I come across!"

Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek
smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,
delivers himself as follows, "My friends, we are now--Rachael, my
wife, and I--in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in
the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are
invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are
bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute
with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are
we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do
we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing,
money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends."

"You're a man of business, you are," returns Mr. Bucket, very
attentive, "and consequently you're going on to mention what the
nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do better."

"Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says Mr. Chadband
with a cunning eye, "proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!"

Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband
into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning
smile.

"Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you. I
helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. I was in the
service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the
disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her
ladyship, that the child was dead--she WAS very nearly so--when she
was born. But she's alive, and I know her." With these words, and a
laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," Mrs.
Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.

"I suppose now," returns that officer, "YOU will be expecting a
twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?"

Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can
"offer" twenty pence.

"My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says Mr.
Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. "What may YOUR
game be, ma'am?"

Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from
stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to
light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom
Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in
darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been
the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much
commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court
in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late
habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the
present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as
open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as
midnight, under the influence--no doubt--of Mr. Snagsby's suborning
and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived
mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was
Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,
deceased; and they were "all in it." In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not
with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby's
son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed Mr.
Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not
his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for
some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down,
and to piece suspicious circumstances together--and every
circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this
way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false
husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the
Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr.
Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the
circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually,
by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is
to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial
separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the
friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the
mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the
seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement
possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no
scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and
taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the
ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.

While this exordium is in hand--and it takes some time--Mr. Bucket,
who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a
glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd
attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock
remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he
once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer
alone of all mankind.

"Very good," says Mr. Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know, and
being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this
little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation
of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I
won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort,
because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to
make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am
surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.
It was so opposed to your interests. That's what I look at."

"We wanted to get in," pleads Mr. Smallweed.

"Why, of course you wanted to get in," Mr. Bucket asserts with
cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life--what I
call truly venerable, mind you!--with his wits sharpened, as I have
no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which
occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to
consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as
close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You
see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground,"
says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.

"I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir
Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr. Smallweed.

"That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you
keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring
for them to carry you down?"

"When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.

"Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful
sex is!" replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. "I shall have the
pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day--not forgetting
Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty."

"Five hundred!" exclaims Mr. Smallweed.

"All right! Nominally five hundred." Mr. Bucket has his hand on the
bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of
myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating
tone.

Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,
and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the
door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, "Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not
to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought
up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that
little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides
of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and
ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he
held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own
way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost,
and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all
dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The
cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the
water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended."

Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and
he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.

"The party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds Mr.
Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising
spirits, "and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence.
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the
course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet
your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the
nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at
present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to
last."

Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts
the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense
of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters.
Mademoiselle Hortense.

The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts
his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to
turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in
his chair.

"I ask you pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "They tell me there was no
one here."

Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket.
Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.

"This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock," says Mr. Bucket, nodding
at her. "This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks
back."

"What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns
mademoiselle in a jocular strain.

"Why, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket, "we shall see."

Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,
which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, "You are very
mysterieuse. Are you drunk?"

"Tolerable sober, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket.

"I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.
Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs
that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What
is the intention of this fool's play, say then?" mademoiselle
demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her
dark cheek beating like a clock.

Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.

"Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries mademoiselle with a
toss of her head and a laugh. "Leave me to pass downstairs, great
pig." With a stamp of her foot and a menace.

"Now, mademoiselle," says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, "you
go and sit down upon that sofy."

"I will not sit down upon nothing," she replies with a shower of
nods.

"Now, mademoiselle," repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration
except with the finger, "you sit down upon that sofy."

"Why?"

"Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't
need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a
foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's rougher
ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as
a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your
head, to go and sit down upon that sofy."

Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that
something in her cheek beats fast and hard, "You are a devil."

"Now, you see," Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, "you're comfortable
and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of
your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this,
don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say anything here,
and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the
less you PARLAY, the better, you know." Mr. Bucket is very complacent
over this French explanation.

Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black
eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid
state, with her hands clenched--and her feet too, one might
suppose--muttering, "Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!"

"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," says Mr. Bucket, and from this
time forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was
her ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this
young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate
against her ladyship after being discharged--"

"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I discharge myself."

"Now, why don't you take my advice?" returns Mr. Bucket in an
impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. "I'm surprised at the
indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be used
against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what
I say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you."

"Discharge, too," cries mademoiselle furiously, "by her ladyship! Eh,
my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by
remaining with a ladyship so infame!"

"Upon my soul I wonder at you!" Mr. Bucket remonstrates. "I thought
the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female
going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!"

"He is a poor abused!" cries mademoiselle. "I spit upon his house,
upon his name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the
carpet represent. "Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh,
heaven! Bah!"

"Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "this intemperate
foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established
a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion
I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her
time and trouble."

"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I ref-use his money all togezzer."

"If you WILL PARLAY, you know," says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, "you
must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this
deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house
in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers
of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and
likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an
unfortunate stationer."

"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "All lie!"

"The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you
know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close
with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case
was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in
the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen
hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the
murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased
on former occasions--even threatening him, as the witness made out.
If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I
believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he
might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make
it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!"

As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement--for him--and
inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes
upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly
together.

"I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this
young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a
mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering
herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever--in
fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for
the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living
Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and
saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!"

Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and
lips the words, "You are a devil."

"Now where," pursues Mr. Bucket, "had she been on the night of the
murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have
since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an
artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;
and I laid a trap for her--such a trap as I never laid yet, and such
a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was
talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house
being small and this young woman's ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet
into Mrs. Bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of surprise
and told her all about it. My dear, don't you give your mind to that
again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles." Mr. Bucket,
breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid
his heavy hand upon her shoulder.

"What is the matter with you now?" she asks him.

"Don't you think any more," returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory
finger, "of throwing yourself out of window. That's what's the matter
with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn't get up; I'll sit down by
you. Now take my arm, will you? I'm a married man, you know; you're
acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm."

Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound
she struggles with herself and complies.

"Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case
could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a
woman in fifty thousand--in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw
this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house
since, though I've communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker's
loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to
Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, 'My dear, can
you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions
against George, and this, and that, and t'other? Can you do without
rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,
'She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner
without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from
death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I
have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs. Bucket says to me, as
well as she could speak on account of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And
she has acted up to it glorious!"

"Lies!" mademoiselle interposes. "All lies, my friend!"

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out
under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous
young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?
I was right. What does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn?
To throw the murder on her ladyship."

Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.

"And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,
which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards
you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
'Lady Dedlock' in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I
stopped this very morning, and read the three words 'Lady Dedlock,
Murderess' in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower
of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place
having seen them all 'written by this young woman? What do you say to
Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding
ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to
Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this young
woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?" Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant
in his admiration of his lady's genius.

Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a
conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very
atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if
a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around
her breathless figure.

"There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful
period," says Mr. Bucket, "and my foreign friend here saw her, I
believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and
George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's
heels. But that don't signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I
found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.
Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your
house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll say, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so
thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the
rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and
finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street."

"These are very long lies," mademoiselle interposes. "You prose great
deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking
always?"

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights
in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with
any fragment of it, "the last point in the case which I am now going
to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never
doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday
without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company
with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to
convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so
rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was
altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call
retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less
experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,
when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home
looking--why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the
ocean--it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being
charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to
want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here
proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that
they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at
a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
entertainment there's a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to
fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;
she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.
As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,
along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water
dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the
pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen
hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and
hold it steady, and I shan't hurt you!"

In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "That's one,"
says Mr. Bucket. "Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!"

He rises; she rises too. "Where," she asks him, darkening her large
eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them--and yet they
stare, "where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?"

"She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr. Bucket.
"You'll see her there, my dear."

"I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting
tigress-like.

"You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr. Bucket.

"I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her limb
from limb."

"Bless you, darling," says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,
"I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising
animosity against one another when you do differ. You don't mind me
half so much, do you?"

"No. Though you are a devil still."

"Angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries Mr. Bucket. "But I am in my
regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.
I've been lady's maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to
the bonnet? There's a cab at the door."

Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes
herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,
uncommonly genteel.

"Listen then, my angel," says she after several sarcastic nods. "You
are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?"

Mr. Bucket answers, "Not exactly."

"That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you
make a honourable lady of her?"

"Don't be so malicious," says Mr. Bucket.

"Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?" cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir
Leicester with ineffable disdain. "Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor
infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other," says Mr.
Bucket. "Come along!"

"You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.
It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,
you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!"

With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth
closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket
gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar
to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering
away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of
his affections.

Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he
were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length
he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises
unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,
supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of
those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at
something.

Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,
the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing
them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious
heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces
sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his
bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with
something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses
his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.

It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for
years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never
had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired,
honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the
core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his
life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as
nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her,
almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her
cast down from the high place she has graced so well.

And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his
suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like
distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of
mourning and compassion rather than reproach.

Flight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Surely not, my dear."

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

"Not know what, my dear?"

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

"But not always, dear George?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"For debt?"

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

"For what is he in prison then?"

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

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

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

"I do not accuse him."

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

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

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

"What letter is it?"

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

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

"Am I to read this?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let him come in!"

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

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

"Do so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No!"

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

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

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

Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.

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

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

"Where is Sir Leicester?"

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

"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pursuit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a long passage, Inspector Bucket informs Sir Leicester Dedlock that his wife is suspected of the murder of Tulkinghorn. He also tells him the sordid story of her lover, Captain Hawdon. Sir Leicester is visibly shaken, and appears to have all the blood drained out of him. He learns that his wife had visited the grave of "him who as should have been her husband," and also that Tulkinghorn knew the secret. Thus the emnity between his wife and his lawyer is revealed -- and the possibility of her having murdered him is given motivation. The Smallweeds, the Snagsbys, and the Chadbands arrive and tell Bucket that they know of love letters to Captain Hawdon from Honoria. They hope to profit from this somehow, but Bucket dismisses everyone. Bucket also arrests Mademoiselle Hortense, and we learn of her duplicity in writing letters accusing Dedlock of the crime. Bucket has employed his wife to spy on her, and he has all the evidence, including the murder weapon, to convict Hortense. Chapter 55 has Mrs. Rouncewell visiting her son in prison. They have not seen each other for many years, and Mrs. Rouncewell and George are very happily reunited. He agrees to defend himself legally. Mrs. Rouncewell then goes to the Dedlock London house, and tells Lady Dedlock that George is being held for Tulkinghorn's murder. She also shows Lady Dedlock a newspaper account of the murder of Tulkinghorn, with Lady Dedlock's name and "murderess" underneath it. This was the false incriminating letter composed by Hortense. Mr. Guppy visits and sees Lady Dedlock, telling her that Captain Hawdon's letters were discovered and may soon come out. Lady Dedlock sees no other way out, and writes a letter to Sir Leicester, explaining she went to Tulkinghorn on the night of his murder, but didn't kill him. She admits to her scandalous past, and then she veils herself, leaving her jewels, and flees. In Chapter 56, after Lady Dedlock's abrupt leaving, Sir Leicester's cousin, Volumnia, discovers Sir Leicester unconscious on the floor of the library. He has had a stroke - he recovers enough to signal for his Lady but he is told she has gone. In an extraordinary example of the power of love, Sir Leicester reads Lady Dedlock's letter and instantly forgives her. He wants Dedlock to find her immediately, and sends the message, "Full forgiveness," to Lady Dedlock. He has not any intention of reproaching her for her past sins, and only desires to have his love and his wife back in his house. Bucket tells Mrs. Rouncewell that Hortense is the murderer, and that George will go free fully exonerated. Sir Leicester finds Esther's monogrammed handkerchief that Lady Dedlock had kept. He maintains to everyone in the house that he forgives his lady. Bucket goes to the shooting gallery, and gets Esther's address from the now-freed George. Bucket asks permission of Mr. Jarndyce to bring Esther with him to search for her mother. Lady Dedlock, inscrutably, is wandering, buffetted by weather, around the brick kilns where Jo had almost lain down to die before Esther took him away.

The resolution of so many loose ends takes place in these three chapters.  The Rouncewells are restored to each other, and George to liberty.  Sir Leicester learns of his lady's deception, and promptly forgives her.  Lady Dedlock flees from the house, and the principle characters are dispatched to rescue her The reformation of Sir Leicester is rather marked.  He has gone from being an object of Boythorn's scorn and hate, to a loving, affectionate, and very forgiving husband. The coincidence of all three suspects visiting Mr. Tulkinghorn's staircase on the night of his murder would probably not have aroused much suspicion in his reading public.  The murder mystery or detective story was not yet common, and such dramatic license was easily accepted in Victoian novels. Despite Hortense's guilt in the murder, the mystery continues with the pursuit of Lady Dedlock.  The clue to her whereabouts is the significant white handkerchief, which foreshadows Lady Dedlock's death in it's previous use as a shroud for a dead infant. Mr. Guppy is used yet again as a plot device, and he, like Mrs. Rouncewell, gives Lady Dedlock wrong or useless information.  She doesn't yet know of Hortense's arrest, nor does she know of her husband's forgiveness.  If she had known these things, her death might have been prevented; as is, her ignorance wrenches still more drama out of a dramatic situation, driving her toward death.