Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

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