Bleak House

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Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better
not be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing
the door on Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her
remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue
Chamber.

In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr.
Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire--bright and warm
on the early winter night--admiring Mercury.

"Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?" says Mr. Bucket.

"Three," says Mercury.

"Are you so much? But then, you see, you're broad in proportion
and don't look it. You're not one of the weak-legged ones, you
ain't. Was you ever modelled now?" Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the
expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head.

Mercury never was modelled.

"Then you ought to be, you know," says Mr. Bucket; "and a friend of
mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would
stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for
the marble. My Lady's out, ain't she?"

"Out to dinner."

"Goes out pretty well every day, don't she?"

"Yes."

"Not to be wondered at!" says Mr. Bucket. "Such a fine woman as
her, so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh
lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your
father in the same way of life as yourself?"

Answer in the negative.

"Mine was," says Mr. Bucket. "My father was first a page, then a
footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived
universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last
breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his
career, and so it was. I've a brother in service, AND a brother-
in-law. My Lady a good temper?"

Mercury replies, "As good as you can expect."

"Ah!" says Mr. Bucket. "A little spoilt? A little capricious?
Lord! What can you anticipate when they're so handsome as that?
And we like 'em all the better for it, don't we?"

Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom
small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of
a man of gallantry and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels and
a violent ringing at the bell. "Talk of the angels," says Mr.
Bucket. "Here she is!"

The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still
very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two
beautiful bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms
is particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an
eager eye and rattles something in his pocket--halfpence perhaps.

Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the
other Mercury who has brought her home.

"Mr. Bucket, my Lady."

Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar
demon over the region of his mouth.

"Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"

"No, my Lady, I've seen him!"

"Have you anything to say to me?"

"Not just at present, my Lady."

"Have you made any new discoveries?"

"A few, my Lady."

This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps
upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot,
watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his
grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their
shadowy weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks
at going by, out of view.

"She's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says Mr. Bucket, coming
back to Mercury. "Don't look quite healthy though."

Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from
headaches.

Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for
that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes
for two hours when she has them bad. By night, too.

"Are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks Mr.
Bucket. "Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?"

Not a doubt about it.

"You're so well put together that I shouldn't have thought it. But
the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so
straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight,
though?"

Oh, yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course!
Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.

"I suppose you ain't in the habit of walking yourself?" says Mr.
Bucket. "Not much time for it, I should say?"

Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers carriage exercise.

"To be sure," says Mr. Bucket. "That makes a difference. Now I
think of it," says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking
pleasantly at the blaze, "she went out walking the very night of
this business."

"To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.

"And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it."

"I didn't see YOU," says Mercury.

"I was rather in a hurry," returns Mr. Bucket, "for I was going to
visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea--next door but two to
the old original Bun House--ninety year old the old lady is, a
single woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be
passing at the time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't
ten."

"Half-past nine."

"You're right. So it was. And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady
was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?"

"Of course she was."

Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has
to get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in
acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he--this is
all he asks--will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of
bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of
both parties?

CHAPTER LIV

Springing a Mine

Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and
prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt
and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of
ceremony, he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his
life of severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton
chops as a foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast,
and marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these
strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his
familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just to mention
quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready
for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned that
Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the
library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment
and stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at
the blazing coals.

Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,
but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he
might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred
guineas certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high
reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in
a masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr.
Bucket when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as
he comes slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of
yesterday in which there might have been yesterday, but for the
audacity of the idea, a touch of compassion.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather
later than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The
agitation and the indignation from which I have recently suffered
have been too much for me. I am subject to--gout"--Sir Leicester
was going to say indisposition and would have said it to anybody
else, but Mr. Bucket palpably knows all about it--"and recent
circumstances have brought it on."

As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,
Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large
hands on the library-table.

"I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes
to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely
as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock
would be interested--"

"Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket with his
head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear
like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. You
will presently see that we can't be too private. A lady, under the
circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of
society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view
to myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we
can't be too private."

"That is enough."

"So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket resumes,
"that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key
in the door."

"By all means." Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that
precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of
habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
from the outerside.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that
I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now
completed it and collected proof against the person who did this
crime."

"Against the soldier?"

"No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."

Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, "Is the man in
custody?"

Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."

Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,
"Good heaven!"

"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket begins, standing
over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the
forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare
you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to
say that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, you are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and
what a gentleman is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when
it must come, boldly and steadily. A gentleman can make up his
mind to stand up against almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. If there's a blow to be inflicted on
you, you naturally think of your family. You ask yourself, how
would all them ancestors of yours, away to Julius Caesar--not to go
beyond him at present--have borne that blow; you remember scores of
them that would have borne it well; and you bear it well on their
accounts, and to maintain the family credit. That's the way you
argue, and that's the way you act, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."

Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,
sits looking at him with a stony face.

"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "thus preparing
you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to
anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many
characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less
don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board
that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken
place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move
whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move
according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be
put out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family
affairs."

"I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester after a
silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which I hope is
not necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be
so good as to go on. Also"--Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the
shadow of his figure--"also, to take a seat, if you have no
objection."

None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.
"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I
come to the point. Lady Dedlock--"

Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him
fiercely. Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.

"Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally admired. That's what her
ladyship is; she's universally admired," says Mr. Bucket.

"I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns stiffly,
"my Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."

"So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but--it's impossible."

"Impossible?"

Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What
I have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all
turns on."

"Officer," retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering
lip, "you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to
overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You
bring my Lady's name into this communication upon your
responsibility--upon your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a
name for common persons to trifle with!"

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no
more."

"I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!"
Glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry
figure trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr.
Bucket feels his way with his forefinger and in a low voice
proceeds.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you
that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and
suspicions of Lady Dedlock."

"If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir--which he never did--I
would have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his
hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he
stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is
slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes
his head.

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and
close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I
can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that
he long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through
the sight of some handwriting--in this very house, and when you
yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present--the existence, in
great poverty, of a certain person who had been her lover before
you courted her and who ought to have been her husband." Mr.
Bucket stops and deliberately repeats, "Ought to have been her
husband, not a doubt about it. I know from his lips that when that
person soon afterwards died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting
his wretched lodging and his wretched grave, alone and in secret.
I know from my own inquiries and through my eyes and ears that Lady
Dedlock did make such visit in the dress of her own maid, for the
deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed me to reckon up her ladyship--if
you'll excuse my making use of the term we commonly employ--and I
reckoned her up, so far, completely. I confronted the maid in the
chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a witness who had been Lady
Dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the shadow of a doubt that
she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown to her. Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the way a
little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying
that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.
All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and
through your own Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr.
Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death
and that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon
the matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady
Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship
whether, even after he had left here, she didn't go down to his
chambers with the intention of saying something further to him,
dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it."

Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that
is probing the life-blood of his heart.

"You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from
me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes
any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no
use, that Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the
soldier as you called him (though he's not in the army now) and
knows that she knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I relate all this?"

Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a
single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he
takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward
calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his
white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something
frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell
of haughtiness, and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in
his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which
occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he
now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that
he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as
the late Mr. Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of
this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this
overwhelming, this incredible intelligence.

"Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket, "put
it to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if
you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll
find, or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had
the intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he
considered it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so
to understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very
morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to
say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you
might wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?"

True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive
sounds, says, "True." At this juncture a considerable noise of
voices is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to
the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again.
Then he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly,
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has
taken air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn
being cut down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these
people now in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting
quiet--on the family account--while I reckon 'em up? And would you
just throw in a nod when I seem to ask you for it?"

Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can,
the best you can!" and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook
of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices
quickly die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead
of Mercury and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed
smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old
man. Another man and two women come behind. Directing the
pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket
dismisses the Mercuries and locks the door again. Sir Leicester
looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy
stare.

"Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr.
Bucket in a confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the
Detective, I am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient
little staff from his breast-pocket, "is my authority. Now, you
wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see
him, and mind you, it ain't every one as is admitted to that
honour. Your name, old gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your
name is; I know it well."

"Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries Mr. Smallweed in
a shrill loud voice.

"You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts
Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.

"No!"

"Why, they killed him," says Mr. Bucket, "on account of his having
so much cheek. Don't YOU get into the same position, because it
isn't worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a
deaf person, are you?"

"Yes," snarls Mr. Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."

"That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she
ain't here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and
I'll not only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit,"
says Mr. Bucket. "This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I
think?"

"Name of Chadband," Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a
much lower key.

"Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr.
Bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it.
Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?"

"And Mrs. Snagsby," Mr. Smallweed introduces.

"Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says Mr. Bucket.
"Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?"

"Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr. Smallweed asks,
a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.

"Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in
presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come."

Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment's counsel
with him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable
amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his
hands, says aloud, "Yes. You first!" and retires to his former
place.

"I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather
Smallweed then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and
he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law.
He was own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways Mrs. Smallweed.
I come into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all
his effects. They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a
bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid
away at the back of a shelf in the side of Lady Jane's bed--his
cat's bed. He hid all manner of things away, everywheres. Mr.
Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and got 'em, but I looked 'em over first.
I'm a man of business, and I took a squint at 'em. They was
letters from the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear
me, that's not a common name, Honoria, is it? There's no lady in
this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh, no, I don't think so!
Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the same hand, perhaps? Oh,
no, I don't think so!"

Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of
his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I'm
shaken all to pieces!"

"Now, when you're ready," says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his
recovery, "to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know."

"Haven't I come to it, Mr. Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed.
"Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and
his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain?
Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns
me, if it don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where
they are. I won't have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em
over to my friend and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody
else."

"Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says Mr.
Bucket.

"I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell
you what we want--what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more
painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the
interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If
George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an
accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any
man."

"Now I tell you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering
his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary
fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have
my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as
half a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want
more painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand,
and do you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out
and put it on the arm that fired that shot?"

Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is
that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to
apologize. Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.

"The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the
murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers,
and I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before
long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've
got to say to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You
want to know who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got
'em. Is that the packet?"