Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great
blow, as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep
preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the freezing
wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire, making its way towards
London.
Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and a glare
the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-landscape,
turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are non-existent in these parts,
though not wholly unexpected. Preparations are afoot, measurements are made,
ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers
desolately look at one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar
couples with an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up
and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows tumbling over
them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where there are rumours of
tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned in full hopelessness. Along the
freezing roads, and through the night, the post-chaise makes its way without a
railroad on its mind.
Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits within the
chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey cloak and umbrella. The
old girl would prefer the bar in front, as being exposed to the weather and a
primitive sort of perch more in accordance with her usual course of travelling,
but Mrs. Rouncewell is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing
it. The old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately
manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it often to her
lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," says she many times, "and you found out
my George's mother!"
"Why, George," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am, and when
he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things my Woolwich could
have to think of when he grew to be a man, the comfortablest would be that he
had never brought a sorrowful line into his mother's face or turned a hair of
her head grey, then I felt sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought
his own mother into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times,
that he had behaved bad to her."
"Never, my dear!" returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. "My blessing
on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me, was my George! But he
had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and went for a soldier. And I know
he waited at first, in letting us know about himself, till he should rise to be
an officer; and when he didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us,
and wouldn't be a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always
from a baby!"
The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls, all in a
tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay good-humoured clever lad
he was; how they all took to him down at Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to
him when he was a young gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people
who had been angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And
now to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher heaves,
and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its load of affectionate
distress.
Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves the old
housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--not without passing the back of
her hand across her own motherly eyes-- and presently chirps up in her cheery
manner, "So I says to George when I goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to
be smoking his pipe outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for
gracious sake? I have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season
and out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy
penitent.' 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I AM melancholy and
penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.' 'What have you done, old
fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, shaking his head, 'what I have
done has been done this many a long year, and is best not tried to be undone
now. If I ever get to heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed
mother; I say no more.' Now, ma'am, when George says to me that it's best not
tried to be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I
draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that afternoon.
Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the lawyer's office, a fine
old lady that has brought his mother plain before him, and he runs on about that
old lady till he quite forgets himself and paints her picture to me as she used
to be, years upon years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this
old lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper for
more than half a century to the Dedlock family down at Chesney Wold in
Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before that he's a Lincolnshire man,
and I says to my old Lignum that night, 'Lignum, that's his mother for five and
for-ty pound!'"
All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least within the
last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with a pretty high note,
that it may be audible to the old lady above the hum of the wheels.
"Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs. Rouncewell. "Bless you, and thank you,
my worthy soul!"
"Dear heart!" cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. "No thanks to me,
I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so ready to pay 'em! And mind
once more, ma'am, what you had best do on finding George to be your own son is
to make him--for your sake --have every sort of help to put himself in the right
and clear himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't
do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers,"
exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter form a separate
establishment and have dissolved partnership with truth and justice for ever and
a day.
"He shall have," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got for him
in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and thankfully, to procure it.
Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole family will do their best. I--I know
something, my dear; and will make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him
all these years, and finding him in a jail at last."
The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying this, her
broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful impression on Mrs.
Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers them all to her sorrow for her
son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should
murmur so distractedly, "My Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.
The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post- chaise comes
rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise departed. It has
plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and
giving place to the realities of day. London reached, the travellers alight, the
old housekeeper in great tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and
collected--as she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit,
were the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any other
military station.
But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is confined, the old
lady has managed to draw about her, with her lavender- coloured dress, much of
the staid calmness which is its usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave,
precise, and handsome piece of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast
and her stomacher is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son
has ruffled it these many years.
Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the act of
coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to him to say
nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as he shuts the door.
So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone, does
not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old housekeeper looks at him, and
those wandering hands of hers are quite enough for Mrs. Bagnet's confirmation,
even if she could see the mother and the son together, knowing what she knows,
and doubt their relationship.
Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word betrays
her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all unconscious, and only her
fluttering hands give utterance to her emotions. But they are very eloquent,
very, very eloquent. Mrs. Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of
joy, of grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return
since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less, and this
son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such touching language
that Mrs. Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they run glistening down her
sun-brown face.
"George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!"
The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on
his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first
association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child does
when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows down his
head, and cries.
"My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite still,
where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a man too, grown
such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he must be, if it pleased God
he was alive!"
She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All that time
the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the whitened wall, leans her
honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with her serviceable grey cloak, and
quite enjoys herself like the best of old girls as she is.
"Mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me first of
all, for I know my need of it."
Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has done it.
She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, that he
was her beloved son George. She has never believed any ill of him, never. If she
had died without this happiness--and she is an old woman now and can't look to
live very long--she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had
her senses, as her beloved son George.
"Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but
of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me too. When I
left home I didn't care much, mother--I am afraid not a great deal--for leaving;
and went away and 'listed, harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared
for nobody, no not I, and that nobody cared for me."
The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but there is an
extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of expressing himself and
carrying himself and the softened tone in which he speaks, interrupted
occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
"So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had 'listed
under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I thought I would
write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year was out, I
thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that
year was out again, perhaps I didn't think much about it. So on, from year to
year, through a service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask
myself why should I ever write."
"I don't find any fault, child--but not to ease my mind, George? Not a word
to your loving mother, who was growing older too?"
This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with a
great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
"Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small consolation
then in hearing anything about me. There were you, respected and esteemed. There
was my brother, as I read in chance North Country papers now and then, rising to
be prosperous and famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not
self-made like him, but self-unmade--all my earlier advantages thrown away, all
my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for most
things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself known? After
letting all that time go by me, what good could come of it? The worst was past
with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a man) how you had mourned for me,
and wept for me, and prayed for me; and the pain was over, or was softened down,
and I was better in your mind as it was."
The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his powerful
hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
"No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be so. I
said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear mother, some good might
have come of it to myself--and there was the meanness of it. You would have
sought me out; you would have purchased my discharge; you would have taken me
down to Chesney Wold; you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's
family together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something for
me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of you feel sure
of me when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself? How could you help
regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you an idle dragooning chap who
was an incumbrance and a discredit to himself, excepting under discipline? How
could I look my brother's children in the face and pretend to set them an
example--I, the vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and
unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words, mother, when
I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your bed. Now, lie upon it.'"
Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the old girl
with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told you so!" The old girl
relieves her feelings and testifies her interest in the conversation by giving
the trooper a great poke between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action
she afterwards repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never
failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to resort to
the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.
"This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best amends was
to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I should have done it
(though I have been to see you more than once down at Chesney Wold, when you
little thought of me) but for my old comrade's wife here, who I find has been
too many for me. But I thank her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with
all my heart and might."
To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.
And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear recovered
boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy close of her life, and
every fond name she can think of, that he must be governed by the best advice
obtainable by money and influence, that he must yield up his case to the
greatest lawyers that can be got, that he must act in this serious plight as he
shall be advised to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must
promise to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he is
released, or he will break her heart.
"Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper, stopping her
with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a late beginning and do it.
Mrs. Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother, I know?"
A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.
"If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, she
will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the best advice
and assistance."
"And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for your
brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me--out in the world beyond
Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it myself--and will be of
great service."
"Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"
"Surely not, my dear."
"Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."
"Not know what, my dear?"
"Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my mmd to
it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done so much to raise
himself while I've been soldiering that I haven't brass enough in my composition
to see him in this place and under this charge. How could a man like him be
expected to have any pleasure in such a discovery? It's impossible. No, keep my
secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my
secret from my brother, of all men."
"But not always, dear George?"
"Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all--though I may come to ask that
too--but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to him that his rip
of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the trooper, shaking his head
very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be governed as to advancing or
retreating by the way in which he seems to take it."
As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it is
recognized in Mrs. Bagnet's face, his mother yields her implicit assent to what
he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
"In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and obedient as
you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am ready even for the
lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at his writing on the table, "an
exact account of what I knew of the deceased and how I came to be involved in
this unfortunate affair. It's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book;
not a word in it but what's wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it,
straight on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I
hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my own in this
case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not to have any."
Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time being on the
wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again the old lady hangs upon
her son's neck, and again and again the trooper holds her to his broad chest.
"Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?"
"I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some
business there that must be looked to directly," Mrs. Rouncewell answers.
"Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of course I
know you will. Why should I ask it!"
Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.
"Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. Kisses to
Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the hand to Lignum, and
this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand pound in gold, my dear!" So
saying, the trooper puts his lips to the old girl's tanned forehead, and the
door shuts upon him in his cell.
No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce Mrs. Bagnet
to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping out cheerfully at the
door of the Dedlock mansion and
handing Mrs. Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges
off, arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and falling to
washing the greens as if nothing had happened.
My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with the
murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is looking at the
spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so leisurely, when a tap comes
at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell. What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to
town so unexpectedly?
"Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with you?"
What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far
happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in
this manner and look at her with such strange mistrust?
"What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."
"Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son--my youngest, who went away for a
soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."
"For debt?"
"Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."
"For what is he in prison then?"
"Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as--as I am.
Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn."
What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does she come
so close? What is the letter that she holds?
"Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must have a
heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I was in this family
before you were born. I am devoted to it. But think of my dear son wrongfully
accused."
"I do not accuse him."
"No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger. Oh, Lady
Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say it!"
What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the person she
petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? Her Lady's handsome
eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear.
"My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in my old
age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so solemn that I
never heard the like in all these years. Night after night, as it has fallen
dark, the sound has echoed through your rooms, but last night it was awfullest.
And as it fell dark last night, my Lady, I got this letter."
"What letter is it?"
"Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened
whisper, "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe what's
written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain that it is not
true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a heart to pity me. If you know
of anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have
any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear
Lady, think of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the
most I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your own
way always without help, and you are not familiar with your friends; and all who
admire you--and all do --as a beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far
away from themselves who can't be approached close. My Lady, you may have some
proud or angry reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so,
pray, oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in
this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to clear my son! My
Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, "I am
so humble in my place and you are by nature so high and distant that you may not
think what I feel for my child, but I feel so much that I have come here to make
so bold as to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any
right or justice at this fearful time!"
Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter from her
hand.
"Am I to read this?"
"When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the most that I
consider possible."
"I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can affect your
son. I have never accused him."
"My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after reading
the letter."
The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth she is
not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable
figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great
compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so
long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the
natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and
dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible
and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now.
She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account of the
discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the
heart; and underneath is written her own name, with the word "murderess"
attached.
It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground she knows
not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before her announcing the
young man of the name of Guppy. The words have probably been repeated several
times, for they are ringing in her head before she begins to understand them.
"Let him come in!"
He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from the
floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr. Guppy she is the
same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, chilling state.
"Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from one who
has never been welcome to your ladyship"--which he don't complain of, for he is
bound to confess that there never has been any particular reason on the face of
things why he should be-- "but I hope when I mention my motives to your ladyship
you will not find fault with me," says Mr. Guppy.
"Do so."
"Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship," Mr. Guppy
sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at his feet, "that
Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned to your ladyship, was at
one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart until erased by circumstances over
which I had no control, communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting
on your ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps whatever
in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson's wishes being to me a
law (except as connected with circumstances over which I have no control), I
consequently never expected to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your
ladyship again."
And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
"And yet I am here now," Mr. Guppy admits. "My object being to communicate to
your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am here."
He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "Nor can I," Mr.
Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too particularly request your
ladyship to take particular notice that it's no personal affair of mine that
brings me here. I have no interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If
it was not for my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred--I, in
point of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have seen
'em further first."
Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair with
both hands.
"Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I was here
I run against a party very eminent in our profession and whose loss we all
deplore. That party certainly did from that time apply himself to cutting in
against me in a way that I will call sharp practice, and did make it, at every
turn and point, extremely difficult for me to be sure that I hadn't
inadvertently led up to something contrary to Miss Summerson's wishes.
Self-praise is no recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad
a man of business neither."
Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately withdraws
his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.
"Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea what that
party was up to in combination with others that until the loss which we all
deplore I was gravelled--an expression which your ladyship, moving in the higher
circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked over. Small
likewise--a name by which I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your
ladyship is not acquainted with--got to be so close and double-faced that at
times it wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the
exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by
the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn and has your
ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room), I have now reasons for an
apprehension as to which I come to put your ladyship upon your guard. First,
will your ladyship allow me to ask you whether you have had any strange visitors
this morning? I don't mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for
instance, as Miss Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his
lower extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?"
"No!"
"Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and have been
received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited at the corner of the
square till they came out, and took half an hour's turn afterwards to avoid
them."
"What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand you. What
do you mean?"
"Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no occasion for
it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss
Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what we
have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to your
ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were. That if there was
anything to be blown upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to
have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or
making."
Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
"Your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what I say or
whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss
Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I had begun to
do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In case I should be taking a
liberty in putting your ladyship on your guard when there's no necessity for it,
you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall
endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your
ladyship, and assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by
me again."
She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when he has
been gone a little while, she rings her bell.
"Where is Sir Leicester?"
Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.
"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"
Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has
been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.
So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows
his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be spreading while she thinks about
it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by
him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.
Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead. Her enemy
he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes upon her like a new
torment at his lifeless hand. And when she recalls how she was secretly at his
door that night, and how she may be represented to have sent her favourite girl
away so soon before merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as
if the hangman's hands were at her neck.
She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all wildly
scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She rises up, hurries
to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks and moans. The horror that is
upon her is unutterable. If she really were the murderess, it could hardly be,
for the moment, more intense.
For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed, however
subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been closed up by a
gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her from seeing any
consequences beyond it; and as those consequences would have rushed in, in an
unimagined flood, the moment the figure was laid low--which always happens when
a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be on the watch before
her, and she used to think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old
man and take him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her
in his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places. So, too,
with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was his death but the
key- stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a
thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal!
Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from this
pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and imperturbable before her in his
well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his
coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication
of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and
even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away like a leaf
before a mighty wind.
She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves them on
her table:
If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe that I am wholly
innocent. Believe no other good of me, for I am innocent of nothing else that
you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that fatal
night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After he had left me, I went out
on pretence of walking in the garden where I sometimes walk, but really to
follow him and make one last petition that he would not protract the dreadful
suspense on which I have been racked by him, you do not know how long, but would
mercifully strike next morning.
I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but there was no
reply, and I came home.
I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May you, in your just
resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most
generous devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper shame than that with which
she hurries from herself--and
who writes this last adieu.
She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money, listens,
goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens and shuts the great
door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
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