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

CHAPTER LVIII

A Wintry Day and Night

 

Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house

carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur.

There are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of

the hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from

the sky; and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom

turning itself exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping

weather out of doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down

into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently.

 

Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.

It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that

that poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It

hears, my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the

world of five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is

something wrong at the Dedlocks’ is to augur yourself unknown. One

of the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already

apprised of all the principal circumstances that will come out

before the Lords on Sir Leicester’s application for a bill of

divorce.

 

At Blaze and Sparkle’s the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss’s the

mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,

the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,

albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured

there as any other article of the stockin-trade, are perfectly

understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.

“Our people, Mr. Jones,” said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in

question on engaging him, “our people, sir, are sheep—mere sheep.

Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those

two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock.” So,

likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing

where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they

(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring

principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great

farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, “Why yes, sir,

there certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current

indeed among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion

must talk about something, sir; and it’s only to get a subject

into vogue with one or two ladies I could name to make it go down

with the whole. Just what I should have done with those ladies,

sir, in the case of any novelty you had left to me to bring in,

they have done of themselves in this case through knowing Lady

Dedlock and being perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too,

sir. You’ll find, sir, that this topic will be very popular among

my high connexion. If it had been a speculation, sir, it would

have brought money. And when I say so, you may trust to my being

right, sir, for I have made it my business to study my high

connexion and to be able to wind it up like a clock, sir.”

 

Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into

Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards’

time, it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr.

Stables, which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has

so long rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is

to the effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed

woman in the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is

immensely received in turf-circles.

 

At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced,

and among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still

the prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it?

Where was it? How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends

with all the genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the

last new manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite

indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is

found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who

never came out before—positively say things! William Buffy

carries one of these smartnesses from the place where he dines down

to the House, where the Whip for his party hands it about with his

snuff-box to keep men together who want to be off, with such effect

that the Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own

ear under the corner of his wig) cries, “Order at the bar!” three

times without making an impression.

 

And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being

vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of

Mr. Sladdery’s high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did

know nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to

pretend that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with the last new word and the last new manner, and the last

new drawl, and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest

of it, all at second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior

systems and to fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art,

or science among these little dealers, how noble in him to support

the feeble sisters on such majestic crutches!

 

So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?

 

Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with

difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to

rest, and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his

old enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though

sometimes he seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his

bedstead to be moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was

such inclement weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he

could see the driving snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls,

throughout the whole wintry day.

 

Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand

is at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what

he would write and whispers, “No, he has not come back yet, Sir

Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a

little time gone yet.”

 

He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow

again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick

and fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the

giddy whirl of white flakes and icy blots.

 

He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not

yet far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms

should be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be

good fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it

yourself. He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs.

Rouncewell with a heavy heart obeys.

 

“For I dread, George,” the old lady says to her son, who waits

below to keep her company when she has a little leisure, “I dread,

my dear, that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls.”

 

“That’s a bad presentiment, mother.”

 

“Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear.”

 

“That’s worse. But why, mother?”

 

“When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me—and I may

say at me too—as if the step on the Ghost’s Walk had almost walked

her down.”

 

“Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother.”

 

“No I don’t, my dear. No I don’t. It’s going on for sixty year

that I have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it

before. But it’s breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock

family is breaking up.”

 

“I hope not, mother.”

 

“I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in

this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too

useless to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place

would be. But the step on the Ghost’s Walk will walk my Lady down,

George; it has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her

and go on.”

 

“Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not.”

 

“Ah, so do I, George,” the old lady returns, shaking her head and

parting her folded hands. “But if my fears come true, and he has

to know it, who will tell him!”

 

“Are these her rooms?”

 

“These are my Lady’s rooms, just as she left them.”

 

“Why, now,” says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a

lower voice, “I begin to understand how you come to think as you do

think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are

fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,

and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows

where.”

 

He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,

so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper

what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady’s state has a

hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,

where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces

of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to

reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate

and vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker

and colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will

barely exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in

the grates and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass