Bleak House
friend, because I’m a mere child in such matters and have no idea of
money.’ Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and
being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round
a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and
looks as innocent as you like, and says, ‘But I don’t know the value
of these things. What am I to DO with this?’ ‘Spend it, sir,’ says I.
‘But I shall be taken in,’ he says, ‘they won’t give me the right
change, I shall lose it, it’s no use to me.’ Lord, you never saw such
a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find
Toughey, and I found him.”
I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole
towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish
innocence.
“Bounds, my dear?” returned Mr. Bucket. “Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson,
I’ll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful
when you are happily married and have got a family about you.
Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in
all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are
dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to
you ‘In worldly matters I’m a child,’ you consider that that person
is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have
got that person’s number, and it’s Number One. Now, I am not a
poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a
company, but I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this
rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I
never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution
to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,
and so go back to our business.”
I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than
it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household
were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by
my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be
doubted that this was the truth.
“Then, Miss Summerson,” said my companion, “we can’t be too soon at
the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries
there I leave to you, if you’ll be so good as to make ’em. The
naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own
way.”
We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it
shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew
me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed
me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in
another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin
of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows
of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,
which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I
pushed it open.
There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying
asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead
child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the
men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket
followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently
knew him.
I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I
knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool
near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that
I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I
became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to
begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.
“Liz,” said I, “I have come a long way in the night and through the
snow to inquire after a lady—”
“Who has been here, you know,” Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the
whole group with a composed propitiatory face; “that’s the lady the
young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know.”
“And who told YOU as there was anybody here?” inquired Jenny’s
husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now
measured him with his eye.
“A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen
waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons,” Mr. Bucket
immediately answered.
“He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is,” growled the
man.
“He’s out of employment, I believe,” said Mr. Bucket apologetically
for Michael Jackson, “and so gets talking.”
The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her
hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have
spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump
of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck
the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an
oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.
“I should like to have seen Jenny very much,” said I, “for I am sure
she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very
anxious indeed—you cannot think how anxious—to overtake. Will Jenny
be here soon? Where is she?”
The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another
oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to
Jenny’s husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
latter turned his shaggy head towards me.
“I’m not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you’ve heerd
me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it’s
curious they can’t let my place be. There’d be a pretty shine made if
I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don’t so much
complain of you as of some others, and I’m agreeable to make you a
civil answer, though I give notice that I’m not a-going to be drawed
like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won’t. Where is she?
She’s gone up to Lunnun.”
“Did she go last night?” I asked.
“Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night,” he answered with a
sulky jerk of his head.
“But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to
her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as
to tell me,” said I, “for I am in great distress to know.”
“If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm—” the
woman timidly began.
“Your master,” said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow
emphasis, “will break your neck if you meddle with wot don’t concern
you.”
After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me
again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.
“Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady
come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I’ll tell you wot the lady
said to her. She said, ‘You remember me as come one time to talk to
you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember
me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had
left?’ Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young
lady up at the house now? No, she warn’t up at the house now. Well,
then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as
we might think it, and could she rest herself where you’re a setten
for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went—it
might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
minutes past twelve; we ain’t got no watches here to know the time
by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don’t know where she go’d.
She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun,
and t’other went right from it. That’s all about it. Ask this man. He
heerd it all, and see it all. He knows.”
The other man repeated, “That’s all about it.”
“Was the lady crying?” I inquired.
“Devil a bit,” returned the first man. “Her shoes was the worse, and
her clothes was the worse, but she warn’t—not as I see.”
The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her
husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his
hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute
his threat if she disobeyed him.
“I hope you will not object to my asking your wife,” said I, “how the
lady looked.”
“Come, then!” he gruffly cried to her. “You hear what she says. Cut
it short and tell her.”
“Bad,” replied the woman. “Pale and exhausted. Very bad.”
“Did she speak much?”
“Not much, but her voice was hoarse.”
She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.
“Was she faint?” said I. “Did she eat or drink here?”
“Go on!” said the husband in answer to her look. “Tell her and cut it
short.”
“She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and
tea. But she hardly touched it.”
“And when she went from here,” I was proceeding, when Jenny’s husband
impatiently took me up.
“When she went from here, she went right away nor’ard by the high
road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn’t so. Now,
there’s the end. That’s all about it.”
I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and
was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took
my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he
looked full at her.
“Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me as we walked quickly away.
“They’ve got her ladyship’s watch among ’em. That’s a positive fact.”
“You saw it?” I exclaimed.
“Just as good as saw it,” he returned. “Else why should he talk about
his ‘twenty minutes past’ and about his having no watch to tell the
time by? Twenty minutes! He don’t usually cut his time so fine as
that. If he comes to half-hours, it’s as much as HE does. Now, you
see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think
she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should
she give it him for?”
He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,
appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his
mind.
“If time could be spared,” said Mr. Bucket, “which is the only thing
that can’t be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;
but it’s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present
circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any
fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and
scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that
ill uses her through thick and thin. There’s something kept back.
It’s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.”
I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt
sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
“It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,
“that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and
it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don’t
come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the cards.
Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don’t see my way to the
usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is
for’ard—straight ahead—and keeping everything quiet!”
We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my
guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.
The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
were on the road again in a few minutes.
It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air
was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall
that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it
was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it