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

and do we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much

the same thing, money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my

friends.”

 

“You’re a man of business, you are,” returns Mr. Bucket, very

attentive, “and consequently you’re going on to mention what the

nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn’t do better.”

 

“Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,” says Mr. Chadband

with a cunning eye, “proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!”

 

Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her

husband into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard,

frowning smile.

 

“Since you want to know what we know,” says she, “I’ll tell you. I

helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship’s daughter. I was in

the service of her ladyship’s sister, who was very sensitive to the

disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her

ladyship, that the child was dead—she WAS very nearly so—when she

was born. But she’s alive, and I know her.” With these words, and

a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word “ladyship,” Mrs.

Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.

 

“I suppose now,” returns that officer, “YOU will be expecting a

twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?”

 

Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can

“offer” twenty pence.

 

“My friend the lawstationer’s good lady, over there,” says Mr.

Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. “What may

YOUR game be, ma’am?”

 

Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from

stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes

to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs,

whom Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to

keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions,

has been the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so

much commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook’s

Court in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late

habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the

present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby’s peace.

There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as

open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as

midnight, under the influence—no doubt—of Mr. Snagsby’s suborning

and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived

mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There

was Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,

deceased; and they were “all in it.” In what, Mrs. Snagsby does

not with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr.

Snagsby’s son, “as well as if a trumpet had spoken it,” and she

followed Mr. Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and

if he was not his son why did he go? The one occupation of her

life has been, for some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and

fro, and up and down, and to piece suspicious circumstances

together—and every circumstance that has happened has been most

suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting

and confounding her false husband, night and day. Thus did it come

to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn

together, and conferred with Mr. Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr.

Guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present

company are interested, casually, by the wayside, being still and

ever on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby’s

full exposure and a matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs.

Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of Mrs. Chadband, and

the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr.

Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with

every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible,

having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the

one mentioned, and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own

dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her

mill of jealousy.

 

While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket,

who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby’s vinegar at

a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd

attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester

Dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him,

except that he once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying

on that officer alone of all mankind.

 

“Very good,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now I understand you, you know, and

being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this

little matter,” again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in

confirmation of the statement, “can give it my fair and full

attention. Now I won’t allude to conspiring to extort money or

anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world

here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But I tell you

what I DO wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making

a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests.

That’s what I look at.”

 

“We wanted to get in,” pleads Mr. Smallweed.

 

“Why, of course you wanted to get in,” Mr. Bucket asserts with

cheerfulness; “but for a old gentleman at your time of life—what I

call truly venerable, mind you!—with his wits sharpened, as I have

no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which

occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to

consider that if he don’t keep such a business as the present as

close as possible it can’t be worth a mag to him, is so curious!

You see your temper got the better of you; that’s where you lost

ground,” says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.

 

“I only said I wouldn’t go without one of the servants came up to

Sir Leicester Dedlock,” returns Mr. Smallweed.

 

“That’s it! That’s where your temper got the better of you. Now,

you keep it under another time and you’ll make money by it. Shall

I ring for them to carry you down?”

 

“When are we to hear more of this?” Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.

 

“Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your

delightful sex is!” replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. “I shall

have the pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day—not

forgetting Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty.”

 

“Five hundred!” exclaims Mr. Smallweed.

 

“All right! Nominally five hundred.” Mr. Bucket has his hand on

the bell-rope. “SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the

part of myself and the gentleman of the house?” he asks in an

insinuating tone.

 

Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,

and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to

the door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, “Sir

Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s for you to consider whether or not

to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it’s being

bought up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You

see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used

by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in

bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it. Mr.

Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand and

could have drove ‘em his own way, I haven’t a doubt; but he was

fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs

over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways.

So it is, and such is life. The cat’s away, and the mice they

play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs. Now, with regard to

the party to be apprehended.”

 

Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open,

and he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his

watch.

 

“The party to be apprehended is now in this house,” proceeds Mr.

Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising

spirits, “and I’m about to take her into custody in your presence.

Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you say a word nor yet stir.

There’ll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I’ll come back in

the course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to

meet your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the

nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,

Baronet, don’t you be nervous on account of the apprehension at

present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first

to last.”

 

Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts

the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a

suspense of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman

enters. Mademoiselle Hortense.

 

The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts

his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to

turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in

his chair.

 

“I ask you pardon,” she mutters hurriedly. “They tell me there was

no one here.”

 

Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr.

Bucket. Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns

deadly pale.

 

“This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” says Mr. Bucket,

nodding at her. “This foreign young woman has been my lodger for

some weeks back.”

 

“What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?” returns

mademoiselle in a jocular strain.

 

“Why, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket, “we shall see.”

 

Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,

which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, “You are very

mysterieuse. Are you drunk?”

 

“Tolerable sober, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket.

 

“I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.

Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs

that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here.

What is the intention of this fool’s play, say then?” mademoiselle

demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in

her dark cheek beating like a clock.

 

Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.

 

“Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!” cries mademoiselle with a

toss of her head and a laugh. “Leave me to pass downstairs, great

pig.” With a stamp of her foot and a menace.

 

“Now, mademoiselle,” says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, “you

go and sit down upon that sofy.”

 

“I will not sit down upon nothing,” she replies with a shower of

nods.

 

“Now, mademoiselle,” repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration

except with the finger, “you sit down upon that sofy.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you

don’t need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your

sex and a foreigner if I can. If I can’t, I must be rough, and

there’s rougher ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So

I recommend you, as a friend, afore another half a blessed moment

has passed over your head, to go and sit down upon that sofy.”

 

Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that

something in her cheek beats fast and hard, “You are a devil.”