Bleak House
is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What
is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library.
Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that.
But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is
reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive
him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now.
He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission,
while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to
dispense with such mockeries.
“What do you want, sir?”
“Why, Lady Dedlock,” says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little
distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up
and down, up and down, “I am rather surprised by the course you have
taken.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure
from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position,
Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I
don’t approve of it.”
He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his
knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an
indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not
escape this woman’s observation.
“I do not quite understand you.”
“Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock,
we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl.”
“Well, sir?”
“And you know—and I know—that you have not sent her away for the
reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as
much as possible from—excuse my mentioning it as a matter of
business—any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself.”
“Well, sir?”
“Well, Lady Dedlock,” returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and
nursing the uppermost knee. “I object to that. I consider that a
dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to
awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don’t know what, in the house.
Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly
what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it
is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what
you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!”
“If, sir,” she begins, “in my knowledge of my secret—” But he
interrupts her.
“Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of
business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your
secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in
trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady
Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation.”
“That is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can
to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference
to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney
Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I
have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could
shake it or could move me.” This she says with great deliberation and
distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for
him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were
any insensible instrument used in business.
“Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock,” he returns, “you are not to be
trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and
according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not
to be trusted.”
“Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same
point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?”
“Yes,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the
hearth. “Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred
to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both
the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any
action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt
about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is
she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One
might have supposed that the course was straight on—over everything,
neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all
considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under
foot.”
She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at
him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower
lip is compressed under her teeth. “This woman understands me,” Mr.
Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. “SHE cannot be
spared. Why should she spare others?”
For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner,
but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk
it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it,
shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness
or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. “This
woman,” thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark
object closing up her view, “is a study.”
He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too
studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak,
appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until
midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence.
“Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview
remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your
sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring
it void and taking my own course.”
“I am quite prepared.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. “That is all I have to trouble you
with, Lady Dedlock.”
She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, “This is the
notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you.”
“Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because
the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed.
But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely
in a lawyer’s mind.”
“You intend to give me no other notice?”
“You are right. No.”
“Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?”
“A home question!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and
cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. “No, not to-night.”
“To-morrow?”
“All things considered, I had better decline answering that question,
Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don’t know when, exactly, you would
not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow.
I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no
expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you
good evening.”
She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks
silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open
it.
“Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were
writing in the library. Are you going to return there?”
“Only for my hat. I am going home.”
She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and
curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch
but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a
splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not
often are, for its accuracy. “And what do YOU say,” Mr. Tulkinghorn
inquires, referring to it. “What do you say?”
If it said now, “Don’t go home!” What a famous clock, hereafter, if
it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this
old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it,
“Don’t go home!” With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters
after seven and ticks on again. “Why, you are worse than I thought
you,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. “Two
minutes wrong? At this rate you won’t last my time.” What a watch to
return good for evil if it ticked in answer, “Don’t go home!”
He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind
him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries,
difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured
up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of
the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family
secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to
whisper, “Don’t go home!”
Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar
and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing
shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the
crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and
nothing meets him murmuring, “Don’t go home!” Arrived at last in his
dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the
Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the
Roman’s hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to
give him the late warning, “Don’t come here!”
It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only
now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining
as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as
he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them.
Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless.
The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their
restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden.
Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much
surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman,
loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with
the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his
Lady’s hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk
there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may
be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring
with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of
some trees.
A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr.
Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting
those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He
looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large
moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude
and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded
places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads
and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in
repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees
against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is
it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the
water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among
pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only
does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick,
where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping
make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed
ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds,
rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with
the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and
on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread
wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only
him; but even on this stranger’s wilderness of London there is some
rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more
ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale
effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are