BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

CHAPTER LVI  

Pursuit

Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house  stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and  gives no outward sign of anything going wrong within.  Carriages  rattle, doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient  charmers with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather  ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these  fascinating creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together,  dazzle the eyes of men.  Forth from the frigid mews come easily  swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs,  deep sunk into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious  Mercuries bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats  broadwise, a spectacle for the angels. 

The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass  before its exalted dullness is disturbed within.  But Volumnia the  fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and  finding that disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence,  ventures at length to repair to the library for change of scene.   Her gentle tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it  and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession.  The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the  ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which  impels her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle  about with a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every  description.  

Certain it is that she avails herself of the present  opportunity of hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like  a bird, taking a short peck at this document and a blink with her  head on one side at that document, and hopping about from table to  table with her glass at her eye in an inquisitive and restless  manner.  In the course of these researches she stumbles over  something, and turning her glass in that direction, sees her  kinsman lying on the ground like a felled tree.  Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation  of reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in  commotion.  Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently  rung, doctors are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all  directions, but not found. 

Nobody has seen or heard her since she  last rang her bell.  Her letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on  her table, but it is doubtful yet whether he has not received  another missive from another world requiring to be personally  answered, and all the living languages, and all the dead, are as  one to him.  They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and  put ice to his head, and try every means of restoration.  Howbeit,  the day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his  stertorous breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness  of the candle that is occasionally passed before them.  But when  this change begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his  eyes or even his hand in token that he hears and comprehends.  He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat  infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. 

He  lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit  shadow of himself.  His voice was rich and mellow and he had so  long been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind  of any word he said that his words really had come to sound as if  there were something in them.  But now he can only whisper, and  what he whispers sounds like what it is--mere jumble and jargon.  His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside.  It  is the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from  it. 

After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he  makes signs for a pencil.  So inexpressively that they cannot at  first understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what  he wants and brings in a slate.  After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand  that is not his, "Chesney Wold?"  No, she tells him; he is in London.  He was taken ill in the  library this morning.  Right thankful she is that she happened to  come to London and is able to attend upon him.  "It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester.   You will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester.  All the  gentlemen say so." 

This, with the tears coursing down her fair old  face.  After making a survey of the room and looking with particular  attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "My  Lady." 

"My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and  don't know of your illness yet."  He points again, in great agitation, at the two words.  They all  try to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. 

On  their looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the  slate once more and writes "My Lady.  For God's sake, where?" 

And  makes an imploring moan.  It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady  Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can  surmise.  She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal.   Having read it twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it  shall not be seen and lies moaning.  He passes into a kind of  relapse or into a swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his  eyes, reclining on his faithful and attached old servant's arm.   

The doctors know that he is best with her, and when not actively  engaged about him, stand aloof.  The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to  write he cannot remember.  His anxiety, his eagerness, and  affliction at this pass are pitiable to behold.  It seems as if he  must go mad in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability  under which he labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom.   He has written the letter B, and there stopped.  Of a sudden, in  the height of his misery, he puts Mr. before it.  The old  housekeeper suggests Bucket.  Thank heaven!  That's his meaning.  Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment.  Shall he  come up?  There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning  wish to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared  of every one but the housekeeper.  It is speedily done, and Mr.  Bucket appears.  Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen  from his high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this  man. 

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this.  I  hope you'll cheer up.  I'm sure you will, on account of the family  credit."  Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his  face while he reads it.  A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket's  eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is  still glancing over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester  Dedlock, Baronet, I understand you."  Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. 

"Full forgiveness.  Find--"   Mr. Bucket stops his hand. 

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her.  But my search  after her must be begun out of hand.  Not a minute must be lost."  With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's  look towards a little box upon a table. 

"Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?  Certainly.  Open  it with one of these here keys?  Certainly.  The littlest key?  TO  be sure.  Take the notes out?  So I will.  Count 'em?  That's soon  done.  Twenty and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's  one twenty, and forty's one sixty.  Take 'em for expenses?  That  I'll do, and render an account of course.  Don't spare money?  No I  won't." 

The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket's interpretation on all  these heads is little short of miraculous.  Mrs. Rouncewell, who  holds the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands  as he starts up, furnished for his journey. 

"You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I  believe?" says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and  buttoning his coat. 

"Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother." 

"So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now.   Well, then, I'll tell you something.  You needn't be distressed no  more.  Your son's all right.  Now, don't you begin a-crying,  because what you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester  Dedlock, Baronet, and you won't do that by crying.  As to your son,  he's all right, I tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and  hoping you're the same.  He's discharged honourable; that's about  what HE is; with no more imputation on his character than there is  on yours, and yours is a tidy one, I'LL bet a pound.  You may trust  me, for I took your son.  He conducted himself in a game way, too,  on that occasion; and he's a fine-made man, and you're a fine-made  old lady, and you're a mother and son, the pair of you, as might be  showed for models in a caravan.  Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,  what you've trusted to me I'll go through with.  Don't you be  afraid of my turing out of my way, right or left, or taking a  sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found what I go in search  of.  Say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part?  Sir  Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. 

And I wish you better, and  these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord, many other family  affairs equally has been, and equally wlll be, to the end of time." 

With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,  looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the  night in quest of the fugitive.  His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms and look  all over them for any trifling indication that may help him.  The  rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light  in his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental  inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance  with himself, would be to see a sight--which nobody DOES see, as he  is particular to lock himself in. 

"A spicy boudoir, this," says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner  furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. 

"Must have  cost a sight of money.  Rum articles to cut away from, these; she  must have been hard put to it!" 

Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and  jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,  and moralizes thereon.  "One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and  getting myself up for almac's," says Mr. Bucket. 

"I begin to think  I must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it." 

Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner  drawer.  His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can  scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a  white handkerchief. 

"Hum!  Let's have a look at YOU," says Mr. Bucket, putting down the  light. 

"What should YOU be kept by yourself for?  What's YOUR  motive?  Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's?   You've got a mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?" 

He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson." 

"Oh!" says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. 

"Come,  I'll take YOU." 

He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has  carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,  glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the  street.  With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir  Leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest coach- stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be driven  to the shooting gallery.  Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a  scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the  principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge  of the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go,  he knows him.  His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance.  Clattering  over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his  keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the  midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where  people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he  rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the  snow lies thin--for something may present itself to assist him,  anywhere--he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he  stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.  "Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back." 

He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his  pipe. 

"I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my  lad.  I haven't a word to spare.  Now, honour!  All to save a  woman.  Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died--that was  the name, I know--all right--where does she live?" 

The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address,  near Oxford Street. 

"You won't repent it, George.  Good night!" 

He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by  the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away  again, and gets out in a cloud of steam again.  Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to  bed, rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell,  and comes down to the door in his dressing-gown. 

"Don't be alarmed, sir."  In a moment his visitor is confidential  with him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand  upon the lock. 

"I've had the pleasure of seeing you before.   Inspector Bucket.  Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther  Summerson's.  Found it myself put away in a drawer of Lady  Dedlock's, quarter of an hour ago.  Not a moment to lose.  Matter  of life or death.  You know Lady Dedlock?" 

"Yes." 

"There has been a discovery there to-day.  Family affairs have come  out.  Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit--apoplexy or  paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been  lost.  Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter  for him that looks bad.  Run your eye over it.  Here it is!"  Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks. 

"I don't know.  It looks like suicide.  Anyways, there's more and  more danger, every minute, of its drawing to that.  I'd give a  hundred pound an hour to have got the start of the present time.   Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,  to follow her and find her, to save her and take her his  forgiveness.  I have money and full power, but I want something  else.  I want Miss Summerson." 

Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "Miss Summerson?" 

"Now, Mr. Jarndyce"--Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest  attention all along--"I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane  heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen.   If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you  couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the  time.  Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound  apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. 

I  am charged to find her.  I am Inspector Bucket.  Besides all the  rest that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes,  suspicion of murder.  If I follow her alone, she, being in  ignorance of what Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated  to me, may be driven to desperation.  But if I follow her in  company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young  lady that she has a tenderness for--I ask no question, and I say no  more than that--she will give me credit for being friendly.  Let me  come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of putting  that young lady for'ard, and I'll save her and prevail with her if  she is alive.  Let me come up with her alone--a hard matter--and  I'll do my best, but I don't answer for what the best may be. 

Time  flies; it's getting on for one o'clock.  When one strikes, there's  another hour gone, and it's worth a thousand pound now instead of a  hundred."  This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be  questioned.  Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks  to Miss Summerson.  Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his  usual principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and  keeping his man in sight.  So he remains, dodging and lurking about  in the gloom of the staircase while they confer.  In a very little  time Mr. Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will  join him directly and place herself under his protection to  accompany him where he pleases.  Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses  high approval and awaits her coming at the door.  There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and  wide.  Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the  streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying  under haystacks.  But the figure that he seeks is not among them.   

Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over;  and in shadowed places down by the river's level; and a dark, dark,  shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all,  clings with a drowning hold on his attention.  Where is she?  Living or dead, where is she? 

If, as he folds the  handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an  enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it  and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the  little child, would he descry her there?  On the waste where the  brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw- roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being  scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and  the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks  like an instrument of human torture--traversing this deserted,  blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to  itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it  would seem, from all companionship.  It is the figure of a woman,  too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came  through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.

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