Bleak House
because you can’t provide for Noodle!
On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends
across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the
country—about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it
that is in question—is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with
Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament,
and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got
him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight
attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear
upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for
three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have
strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the
business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are,
dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences
of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and
distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but
Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the
great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no
doubt—a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be
occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as
on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and
families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are
the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can
appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the
brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the
long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as
with the circle the necromancer draws around him—very strange
appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this
difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the
greater danger of their breaking in.
Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of
injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies’-maids, and is not
to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of
the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and
having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s room,
and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.
He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park
from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had
never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a
servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should
be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of
the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining
flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any
fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen
walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the
library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances
down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive
him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night
my Lady casually asks her maid, “Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?”
Every night the answer is, “No, my Lady, not yet.”
One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in
deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in
the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
“Be so good as to attend,” says my Lady then, addressing the
reflection of Hortense, “to your business. You can contemplate your
beauty at another time.”
“Pardon! It was your Ladyship’s beauty.”
“That,” says my Lady, “you needn’t contemplate at all.”
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright
groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the
Ghost’s Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady
remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards
them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never
slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask—if it be a
mask—and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every
crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great
or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his
personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients;
he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
“How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?” says Sir Leicester, giving him his
hand.
Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady
is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands
behind him, walks at Sir Leicester’s side along the terrace. My Lady
walks upon the other side.
“We expected you before,” says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation.
As much as to say, “Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when
you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a
fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is
much obliged.
“I should have come down sooner,” he explains, “but that I have been
much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself
and Boythorn.”
“A man of a very ill-regulated mind,” observes Sir Leicester with
severity. “An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a
very low character of mind.”
“He is obstinate,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
“It is natural to such a man to be so,” says Sir Leicester, looking
most profoundly obstinate himself. “I am not at all surprised to hear
it.”
“The only question is,” pursues the lawyer, “whether you will give up
anything.”
“No, sir,” replies Sir Leicester. “Nothing. I give up?”
“I don’t mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you
would not abandon. I mean any minor point.”
“Mr. Tulkinghorn,” returns Sir Leicester, “there can be no minor
point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe
that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor
point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as
in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. “I have now my
instructions,” he says. “Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of
trouble—”
“It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” Sir Leicester
interrupts him, “TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned,
levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have
been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and
severely punished—if not,” adds Sir Leicester after a moment’s
pause, “if not hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in
passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory
thing to having the sentence executed.
“But night is coming on,” says he, “and my Lady will take cold. My
dear, let us go in.”
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr.
Tulkinghorn for the first time.
“You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened
to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had
quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can’t
imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely
had some.”
“You had some?” Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
“Oh, yes!” returns my Lady carelessly. “I think I must have had some.
And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that
actual thing—what is it!—affidavit?”
“Yes.”
“How very odd!”
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted
in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows
brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,
through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape
shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller
besides the waste of clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir
Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands
before the fire with his hand out at arm’s length, shading his face.
He looks across his arm at my Lady.
“Yes,” he says, “I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what
is very strange, I found him—”
“Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!” Lady Dedlock
languidly anticipates.
“I found him dead.”
“Oh, dear me!” remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the
fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
“I was directed to his lodging—a miserable, poverty-stricken
place—and I found him dead.”
“You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” observes Sir Leicester. “I
think the less said—”
“Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out” (it is my Lady
speaking). “It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking!
Dead?”
Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.
“Whether by his own hand—”
“Upon my honour!” cries Sir Leicester. “Really!”
“Do let me hear the story!” says my Lady.
“Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say—”
“No, you mustn’t say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn.”
Sir Leicester’s gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels
that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is
really—really—
“I was about to say,” resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness,
“that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my
power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying
that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his
own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be
known. The coroner’s jury found that he took the poison
accidentally.”
“And what kind of man,” my Lady asks, “was this deplorable creature?”
“Very difficult to say,” returns the lawyer, shaking his head. “He
had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour
and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him
the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had
once been something better, both in appearance and condition.”
“What did they call the wretched being?”
“They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his
name.”
“Not even any one who had attended on him?”
“No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found
him.”
“Without any clue to anything more?”
“Without any; there was,” says the lawyer meditatively, “an old
portmanteau, but—No, there were no papers.”
During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady
Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their
customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another—as
was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir
Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the
Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately
protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my
Lady’s mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he
was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a
subject so far removed from my Lady’s station.
“Certainly, a collection of horrors,” says my Lady, gathering up her
mantles and furs, “but they interest one for the moment! Have the
kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she
passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner
and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner—again, next
day—again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the