Bleak House
her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow
Rosa; Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener
goes before to open the shutters.
As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and
his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle
about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don’t care for the right
things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression
of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber
that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house
itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens
with stately approval to Rosa’s exposition. Her grandson is so
attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever—and prettier. Thus they
pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few
brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and
reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It
appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend that
there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to
consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves
for seven hundred years.
Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy’s
spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly
strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,
painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a
charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon
interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.
“Dear me!” says Mr. Guppy. “Who’s that?”
“The picture over the fire-place,” says Rosa, “is the portrait of the
present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the
best work of the master.”
“Blest,” says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend,
“if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been
engraved, miss?”
“The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always
refused permission.”
“Well!” says Mr. Guppy in a low voice. “I’ll be shot if it ain’t very
curious how well I know that picture! So that’s Lady Dedlock, is it!”
“The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The
picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester.”
Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. “It’s
unaccountable to me,” he says, still staring at the portrait, “how
well I know that picture! I’m dashed,” adds Mr. Guppy, looking round,
“if I don’t think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!”
As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy’s dreams,
the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by
the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young
gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a
dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for
interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare,
as if he were looking everywhere for Lady Dedlock again.
He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown,
as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she
looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death.
All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains
to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to
the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her
description; which is always this: “The terrace below is much
admired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost’s
Walk.”
“No?” says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious. “What’s the story, miss? Is
it anything about a picture?”
“Pray tell us the story,” says Watt in a half whisper.
“I don’t know it, sir.” Rosa is shyer than ever.
“It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten,” says the
housekeeper, advancing. “It has never been more than a family
anecdote.”
“You’ll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a
picture, ma’am,” observes Mr. Guppy, “because I do assure you that
the more I think of that picture the better I know it, without
knowing how I know it!”
The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can
guarantee that. Mr. Guppy is obliged to her for the information and
is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided
down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard
to drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Rouncewell can trust to the
discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace
came to have that ghostly name.
She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and
tells them: “In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the
First—I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who
leagued themselves against that excellent king—Sir Morbury Dedlock
was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a
ghost in the family before those days, I can’t say. I should think it
very likely indeed.”
Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a
family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She
regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a
genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
“Sir Morbury Dedlock,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, “was, I have no occasion
to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that
his Lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the
bad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles’s
enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave
them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his
Majesty’s cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer
to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a
sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?”
Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
“I hear the rain-drip on the stones,” replies the young man, “and I
hear a curious echo—I suppose an echo—which is very like a halting
step.”
The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: “Partly on account of
this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury
and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper.
They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they
had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite
brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir
Morbury’s near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated
the race into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to
ride out from Chesney Wold in the king’s cause, she is supposed to
have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night
and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour,
her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the
stall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the
wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being
frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that
hour began to pine away.”
The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a
whisper.
“She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She
never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being
crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon
the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and
down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater
difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she
had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night),
standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement.
He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over
her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, ‘I will die here
where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I
will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when
calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen
for my step!’”
Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the
ground, half frightened and half shy.
“There and then she died. And from those days,” says Mrs. Rouncewell,
“the name has come down—the Ghost’s Walk. If the tread is an echo,
it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for
a long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so
sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard
then.”
“And disgrace, grandmother—” says Watt.
“Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold,” returns the housekeeper.
Her grandson apologizes with “True. True.”
“That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,”
says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; “and what is to be
noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afraid of
nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot
shut it out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed
there, ’a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can
play music. You understand how those things are managed?”
“Pretty well, grandmother, I think.”
“Set it a-going.”
Watt sets it a-going—music and all.
“Now, come hither,” says the housekeeper. “Hither, child, towards my
Lady’s pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen!
Can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the
beat, and everything?”
“I certainly can!”
“So my Lady says.”
CHAPTER VIII
Covering a Multitude of Sins
It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of
window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like
two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the
indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day
came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the
scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory
over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects
that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly
discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still
glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and
fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough
to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only
incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all
melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape,
prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower,
threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible
with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have
learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.
Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so
attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,
though what with trying to remember the contents of each little
store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate
about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and
china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a
methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy
that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell
ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been
installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they
were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take
a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it
quite a delightful place—in front, the pretty avenue and drive by
which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the
gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll