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

a pity but what we had seen the other woman.”

 

I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt

sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.

 

“It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,

“that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you,

and it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It

don’t come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the

cards. Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir

Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don’t see my way

to the usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss

Summerson, is for’ard—straight ahead—and keeping everything

quiet!”

 

We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my

guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the

carriage. The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen

coming, and we were on the road again in a few minutes.

 

It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air

was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the

fall that we could see but a very little way in any direction.

Although it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen,

and it churned—with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells

—under the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes

slipped and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to

come to a standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in

this first stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver

had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.

 

I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous

under those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I

had an unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding

to my companion’s better sense, however, I remained where I was.

All this time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in

which he was engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to,

addressing people whom he had never beheld before as old

acquaintances, running in to warm himself at every fire he saw,

talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap,

friendly with every waggoner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the

box again with his watchful, steady face and his business-like “Get

on, my lad!”

 

When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the

stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off

him—plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had

been doing frequently since we left Saint Albans—and spoke to me

at the carriage side.

 

“Keep up your spirits. It’s certainly true that she came on here,

Miss Summerson. There’s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and

the dress has been seen here.”

 

“Still on foot?” said I.

 

“Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the

point she’s aiming at, and yet I don’t like his living down in her

own part of the country neither.”

 

“I know so little,” said I. “There may be some one else nearer

here, of whom I never heard.”

 

“That’s true. But whatever you do, don’t you fall a-crying, my

dear; and don’t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get

on, my lad!”

 

The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on

early, and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I

had never seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got

into the ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the

time I had been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of

great duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been

free from the anxiety under which I then laboured.

 

As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost

confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside

people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I

saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during

the whole of one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to

ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us

what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that

were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He always

gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as

he got upon the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he

said, “Get on, my lad!”

 

At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the

track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was

nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take

it up for another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in

an unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This

corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look

at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a

quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not

to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that

the next stage might set us right again.

 

The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new

clue. There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable

substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway

before I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to

the carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while

the horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to

refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.

 

It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways.

On one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers

were unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy

carriage, and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the

sign was heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark

pine-trees. Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it

silently dropped off in wet heaps while I stood at the window.

Night was setting in, and its bleakness was enhanced by the

contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems of the trees and followed the

discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it

and undermining it, I thought of the motherly face brightly set off

by daughters that had just now welcomed me and of MY mother lying

down in such a wood to die.

 

I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered

that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was

some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the

fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no

further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a

tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her

words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.

 

A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls,

all so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl,

while Mr. Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not

do it when a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside,

though I was very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could

take some toast and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that

refreshment, it made some recompense.

 

Punctual to the time, at the half-hour’s end the carriage came

rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed,

refreshed, comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to

faint any more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave

of them all, the youngest daughter—a blooming girl of nineteen,

who was to be the first married, they had told me—got upon the

carriage step, reached in, and kissed me. I have never seen her,

from that hour, but I think of her to this hour as my friend.

 

The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright

and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and

again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on

with toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than

they had been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion

smoking on the box—I had thought at the last inn of begging him to

do so when I saw him standing at a great fire in a comfortable

cloud of tobacco—was as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and

up again when we came to any human abode or any human creature. He

had lighted his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a favourite

with him, for we had lamps to the carriage; and every now and then

he turned it upon me to see that I was doing well. There was a

folding-window to the carriage-head, but I never closed it, for it

seemed like shutting out hope.

 

We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not

recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change,

but I knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers

that he had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I

leaned back in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in

his hand, an excited and quite different man.

 

“What is it?” said I, starting. “Is she here?”

 

“No, no. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody’s here. But

I’ve got it!”

 

The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in

ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his

breath before he spoke to me.

 

“Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, beating his finger on the apron,

“don’t you be disappointed at what I’m a-going to do. You know me.

I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We’ve come a long way;

never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!”

 

There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of

the stables to know if he meant up or down.

 

“Up, I tell you! Up! Ain’t it English? Up!”

 

“Up?” said I, astonished. “To London! Are we going back?”

 

“Miss Summerson,” he answered, “back. Straight back as a die. You

know me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll follow the other, by G—”

 

“The other?” I repeated. “Who?”

 

“You called her Jenny, didn’t you? I’ll follow her. Bring those

two pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!”

 

“You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not

abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know

her to be in!” said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.

 

“You are right, my dear, I won’t. But I’ll follow the other. Look

alive here with them horses. Send a man for’ard in the