Bleak House
of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of
nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking
very busy and very attentive.
“Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me, “you won’t be alarmed whatever
comes off, I know. It’s not necessary for me to give you any further
caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and
that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don’t like to
ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?”
Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
“It ain’t so easy to keep your feet,” said Mr. Bucket, “but take
time.”
Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the
street, I thought I knew the place. “Are we in Holborn?” I asked him.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bucket. “Do you know this turning?”
“It looks like Chancery Lane.”
“And was christened so, my dear,” said Mr. Bucket.
We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I
heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and
as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming
towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and
stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an
exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his
voice very well.
It was so unexpected and so—I don’t know what to call it, whether
pleasant or painful—to come upon it after my feverish wandering
journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange
country.
“My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in
such weather!”
He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some
uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I
told him that we had but just left a coach and were going—but then I
was obliged to look at my companion.
“Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt”—he had caught the name from me—“we
are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket.”
Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off
his cloak and was putting it about me. “That’s a good move, too,”
said Mr. Bucket, assisting, “a very good move.”
“May I go with you?” said Mr. Woodcourt. I don’t know whether to me
or to my companion.
“Why, Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. “Of
course you may.”
It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped
in the cloak.
“I have just left Richard,” said Mr. Woodcourt. “I have been sitting
with him since ten o’clock last night.”
“Oh, dear me, he is ill!”
“No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed
and faint—you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes—and Ada
sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came
straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,
and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though
God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him
until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is
now, I hope!”
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected
devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had
inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate
all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it
had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the
change in my appearance: “I will accept him as a trust, and it shall
be a sacred one!”
We now turned into another narrow street. “Mr. Woodcourt,” said Mr.
Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, “our business
takes us to a law-stationer’s here, a certain Mr. Snagsby’s. What,
you know him, do you?” He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
“Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place.”
“Indeed, sir?” said Mr. Bucket. “Then you will be so good as to let
me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have
half a word with him?”
The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing
silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my
saying I heard some one crying.
“Don’t be alarmed, miss,” he returned. “It’s Snagsby’s servant.”
“Why, you see,” said Mr. Bucket, “the girl’s subject to fits, and has
’em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I
want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to
reason somehow.”
“At all events, they wouldn’t be up yet if it wasn’t for her, Mr.
Bucket,” said the other man. “She’s been at it pretty well all night,
sir.”
“Well, that’s true,” he returned. “My light’s burnt out. Show yours a
moment.”
All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I
could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light
produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.
The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,
leaving us standing in the street.
“Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “if without obtruding myself on
your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so.”
“You are truly kind,” I answered. “I need wish to keep no secret of
my own from you; if I keep any, it is another’s.”
“I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as
I can fully respect it.”
“I trust implicitly to you,” I said. “I know and deeply feel how
sacredly you keep your promise.”
After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.
Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. “Please to
come in, Miss Summerson,” he said, “and sit down by the fire. Mr.
Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a
medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be
done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I
particularly want. It’s not in her box, and I think it must be about
her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to
handle without hurting.”
We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
meekly.
“Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket,” said he. “The lady will
excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The
back is Guster’s bedroom, and in it she’s a-carrying on, poor thing,
to a frightful extent!”
We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.
Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, “to
wave—not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear—hostilities for
one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady.”
She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
looked particularly hard at me.
“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, “it is not
unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street,
at the present hour. I don’t know. I have not the least idea. If I
was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I’d rather
not be told.”
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I
appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.
Bucket took the matter on himself.
“Now, Mr. Snagsby,” said he, “the best thing you can do is to go
along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster—”
“My Guster, Mr. Bucket!” cried Mr. Snagsby. “Go on, sir, go on. I
shall be charged with that next.”
“And to hold the candle,” pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
himself, “or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you’re
asked. Which there’s not a man alive more ready to do, for you’re a
man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you’ve got the sort of
heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good
as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me
have it as soon as ever you can?”
As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire
and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,
talking all the time.
“Don’t you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look
from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she’s under a mistake altogether.
She’ll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her
generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I’m a-going
to explain it to her.” Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat
and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.
Snagsby. “Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman
possessing what you may call charms, you know—‘Believe Me, if All
Those Endearing,’ and cetrer—you’re well acquainted with the song,
because it’s in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are
strangers—charms—attractions, mind you, that ought to give you
confidence in yourself—is, that you’ve done it.”
Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
what did Mr. Bucket mean.
“What does Mr. Bucket mean?” he repeated, and I saw by his face that
all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the
letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it
must be; “I’ll tell you what he means, ma’am. Go and see Othello
acted. That’s the tragedy for you.”
Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
“Why?” said Mr. Bucket. “Because you’ll come to that if you don’t
look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
mind’s not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I
tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you’re what I call an
intellectual woman—with your soul too large for your body, if you
come to that, and chafing it—and you know me, and you recollect
where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don’t
you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady.”
Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
at the time.
“And Toughey—him as you call Jo—was mixed up in the same business,
and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the
same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge
of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,
deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and
the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no
other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts
her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed
head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.
Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)”
Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Is that all?” said Mr. Bucket excitedly. “No. See what happens.
Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a
wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your
maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes
a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do
you do? You hide and you watch ’em, and you pounce upon that
maid-servant—knowing what she’s subject to and what a little thing
will bring ’em on—in that surprising manner and with that severity
that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
hanging upon that girl’s words!”
He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped