Bleak House
Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be
wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be
received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he
moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.
Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,
away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and
hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for
the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester
holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no
occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily
Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state
of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that
Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.
“How are we getting on?” says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. “ARE
we safe?”
The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will
throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has
just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright
particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.
“Volumnia,” replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, “we
are doing tolerably.”
“Only tolerably!”
Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own
particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near
it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who
should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must
not be understood as a common expression, “Volumnia, we are doing
tolerably.”
“At least there is no opposition to YOU,” Volumnia asserts with
confidence.
“No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many
respects, I grieve to say, but—”
“It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!”
Volumnia’s finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir
Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to
himself, “A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
precipitate.”
In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock’s
observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always
delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale
order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to
him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending
down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, “You will have the
goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and
to send them home when done.”
“I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown
a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of
a most determined and most implacable description.”
“W-r-retches!” says Volumnia.
“Even,” proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins
on sofas and ottomans, “even in many—in fact, in most—of those
places in which the government has carried it against a faction—”
(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the
Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position
towards the Coodleites.)
“—Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be
constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without
being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,” says Sir Leicester,
eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,
“hundreds of thousands of pounds!”
If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too
innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well
with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and
pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, “What for?”
“Volumnia,” remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.
“Volumnia!”
“No, no, I don’t mean what for,” cries Volumnia with her favourite
little scream. “How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!”
“I am glad,” returns Sir Leicester, “that you do mean what a pity.”
Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people
ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.
“I am glad, Volumnia,” repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these
mollifying sentiments, “that you do mean what a pity. It is
disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and
without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me ‘what for?’
let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good
sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere.”
Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect
towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary
expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some
graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the
Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High
Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of
the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight
gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
“I suppose,” observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover
her spirits after her late castigation, “I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn
has been worked to death.”
“I don’t know,” says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, “why Mr.
Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don’t know what Mr.
Tulkinghorn’s engagements may be. He is not a candidate.”
Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could
desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,
suggests, by somebody—to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester
is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of
his assistance.
Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its
cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the
park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer’s name was mentioned.
A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now
observes from his couch that man told him ya’as’dy that Tulkinghorn
had gone down t’ that iron place t’ give legal ’pinion ’bout
something, and that contest being over t’ day, ’twould be highly
jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should ’pear with news that Coodle man
was floored.
Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,
that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns
her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.
Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so
original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing
all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded
that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,
and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with
candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock
delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.
“He has not been here once,” she adds, “since I came. I really had
some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had
almost made up my mind that he was dead.”
It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker
gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady’s face, as if she
thought, “I would he were!”
“Mr. Tulkinghorn,” says Sir Leicester, “is always welcome here and
always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and
deservedly respected.”
The debilitated cousin supposes he is “’normously rich fler.”
“He has a stake in the country,” says Sir Leicester, “I have no
doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on
a footing of equality with the highest society.”
Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.
“Good gracious, what’s that?” cries Volumnia with her little withered
scream.
“A rat,” says my Lady. “And they have shot him.”
Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
“No, no,” says Sir Leicester, “I think not. My Lady, do you object to
the twilight?”
On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
“Volumnia?”
Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the
dark.
“Then take them away,” says Sir Leicester. “Tulkinghorn, I beg your
pardon. How do you do?”
Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his
passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester’s hand, and subsides
into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on
the opposite side of the Baronet’s little newspaper-table. Sir
Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will
take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would
rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf
about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile
takes a pinch of snuff.
“Now,” says Sir Leicester. “How has that contest gone?”
“Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in
both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.”
It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no
political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says “you” are
beaten, and not “we.”
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a
thing. ‘The debilitated cousin holds that it’s sort of thing that’s
sure tapn slongs votes—giv’n—Mob.
“It’s the place, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the
fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, “where they
wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell’s son.”
“A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had
the becoming taste and perception,” observes Sir Leicester, “to
decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments
expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in
this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I
am glad to acknowledge.”
“Ha!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It did not prevent him from being very
active in this election, though.”
Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. “Did I
understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active
in this election?”
“Uncommonly active.”
“Against—”
“Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and
emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the
business part of the proceedings he carried all before him.”
It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that
Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
“And he was much assisted,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, “by
his son.”
“By his son, sir?” repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.
“By his son.”
“The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady’s service?”
“That son. He has but one.”
“Then upon my honour,” says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause
during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, “then
upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,
the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters
have—a—obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion
by which things are held together!”
General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is
really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in
and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks—country’s
going—Dayvle—steeple-chase pace.
“I beg,” says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, “that we may
not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My
Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman—”
“I have no intention,” observes my Lady from her window in a low but
decided tone, “of parting with her.”
“That was not my meaning,” returns Sir Leicester. “I am glad to hear
you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your