Bleak House
churned—with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells—under
the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped
and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a
standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first
stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to
dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under
those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an
unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
companion’s better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this
time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was
engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing
people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running
in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and
shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,
wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose
time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady
face and his business-like “Get on, my lad!”
When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the
stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off
him—plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been
doing frequently since we left Saint Albans—and spoke to me at the
carriage side.
“Keep up your spirits. It’s certainly true that she came on here,
Miss Summerson. There’s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and
the dress has been seen here.”
“Still on foot?” said I.
“Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point
she’s aiming at, and yet I don’t like his living down in her own part
of the country neither.”
“I know so little,” said I. “There may be some one else nearer here,
of whom I never heard.”
“That’s true. But whatever you do, don’t you fall a-crying, my dear;
and don’t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my
lad!”
The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,
and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never
seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had
been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great
duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free
from the anxiety under which I then laboured.
As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost
confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,
but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of
one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of
coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had
seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their
replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of
his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but
he seemed perplexed now when he said, “Get on, my lad!”
At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track
of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,
he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an
unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This
corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at
direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a
quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to
be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the
next stage might set us right again.
The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.
There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable
substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before
I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the
carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the
horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to
refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.
It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On
one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were
unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,
and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.
Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off
in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and
its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire
glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems
of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the
thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the
motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now
welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.
I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered
that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was
some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the
fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no
further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a
tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her
words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.
A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all
so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.
Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when
a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was
very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast
and some hot negus; and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made
some recompense.
Punctual to the time, at the half-hour’s end the carriage came
rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,
comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,
the youngest daughter—a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the
first married, they had told me—got upon the carriage step, reached
in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think
of her to this hour as my friend.
The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright
and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and
again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with
toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had
been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the
box—I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw
him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco—was
as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to
any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark
lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to
the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that
I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,
but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not
recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I
knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he
had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back
in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an
excited and quite different man.
“What is it?” said I, starting. “Is she here?”
“No, no. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody’s here. But I’ve got
it!”
The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in
ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his
breath before he spoke to me.
“Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, beating his finger on the apron,
“don’t you be disappointed at what I’m a-going to do. You know me.
I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We’ve come a long way;
never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!”
There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the
stables to know if he meant up or down.
“Up, I tell you! Up! Ain’t it English? Up!”
“Up?” said I, astonished. “To London! Are we going back?”
“Miss Summerson,” he answered, “back. Straight back as a die. You
know me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll follow the other, by G——”
“The other?” I repeated. “Who?”
“You called her Jenny, didn’t you? I’ll follow her. Bring those two
pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!”
“You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not
abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her
to be in!” said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.
“You are right, my dear, I won’t. But I’ll follow the other. Look
alive here with them horses. Send a man for’ard in the saddle to the
next stage, and let him send another for’ard again, and order four
on, up, right through. My darling, don’t you be afraid!”
These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them
caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me
than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted
man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to
with great speed.
“My dear,” said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,
“—you’ll excuse me if I’m too familiar—don’t you fret and worry
yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;
but you know me, my dear; now, don’t you?”
I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of
deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?
Could I not go forward by myself in search of—I grasped his hand
again in my distress and whispered it to him—of my own mother.
“My dear,” he answered, “I know, I know, and would I put you wrong,
do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don’t you?”
What could I say but yes!
“Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me
for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
Now, are you right there?”
“All right, sir!”
“Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!”
We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing
up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a
waterwheel.
CHAPTER LVIII
A Wintry Day and Night
Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house
carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There
are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the
hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;
and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself
exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of
doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire,
but is expected to return presently.
Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.
It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that
poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears,
my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of
five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something
wrong at the Dedlocks’ is to augur yourself unknown. One of the
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised
of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the
Lords on Sir Leicester’s application for a bill of divorce.