Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0141439726
Book online «Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗». Author Charles Dickens
“You are truly kind,” I answered. “I need wish to keep no secret
of my own from you; if I keep any, it is another’s.”
“I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long
as I can fully respect it.”
“I trust implicitly to you,” I said. “I know and deeply feel how
sacredly you keep your promise.”
After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and
Mr. Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face.
“Please to come in, Miss Summerson,” he said, “and sit down by the
fire. Mr. Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand
you are a medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if
anything can be done to bring her round. She has a letter
somewhere that I particularly want. It’s not in her box, and I
think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up
that she is difficult to handle without hurting.”
We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
meekly.
“Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket,” said he. “The lady will
excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room.
The back is Guster’s bedroom, and in it she’s a-carrying on, poor
thing, to a frightful extent!”
We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was
Mrs. Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of
face.
“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, “to wave—
not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear—hostilities for one
single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady.”
She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
looked particularly hard at me.
“My little woman,” said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, “it is not
unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook’s Court, Cursitor
Street, at the present hour. I don’t know. I have not the least
idea. If I was to be informed, I should despair of understanding,
and I’d rather not be told.”
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and
I appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when
Mr. Bucket took the matter on himself.
“Now, Mr. Snagsby,” said he, “the best thing you can do is to go
along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster—”
“My Guster, Mr. Bucket!” cried Mr. Snagsby. “Go on, sir, go on. I
shall be charged with that next.”
“And to hold the candle,” pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
himself, “or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you’re
asked. Which there’s not a man alive more ready to do, for you’re
a man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you’ve got the sort of
heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so
good as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let
me have it as soon as ever you can?”
As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the
fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the
fender, talking all the time.
“Don’t you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable
look from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she’s under a mistake
altogether. She’ll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to
a lady of her generally correct manner of forming her thoughts,
because I’m a-going to explain it to her.” Here, standing on the
hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of
wet, he turned to Mrs. Snagsby. “Now, the first thing that I say
to you, as a married woman possessing what you may call charms, you
know—‘Believe Me, if All Those Endearing,’ and cetrer—you’re well
acquainted with the song, because it’s in vain for you to tell me
that you and good society are strangers—charms—attractions, mind
you, that ought to give you confidence in yourself—is, that you’ve
done it.”
Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
what did Mr. Bucket mean.
“What does Mr. Bucket mean?” he repeated, and I saw by his face
that all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of
the letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how
important it must be; “I’ll tell you what he means, ma’am. Go and
see Othello acted. That’s the tragedy for you.”
Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
“Why?” said Mr. Bucket. “Because you’ll come to that if you don’t
look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
mind’s not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall
I tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you’re what I call
an intellectual woman—with your soul too large for your body, if
you come to that, and chafing it—and you know me, and you
recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that
circle. Don’t you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that
young lady.”
Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
at the time.
“And Toughey—him as you call Jo—was mixed up in the same
business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was
mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with
no more knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up
(by Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, his best customer) in the same
business, and no other; and the whole bileing of people was mixed
up in the same business, and no other. And yet a married woman,
possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too),
and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I
am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. Woodcourt might have got it by
this time.)”
Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Is that all?” said Mr. Bucket excitedly. “No. See what happens.
Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in
a wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to
your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there
passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What
do you do? You hide and you watch ‘em, and you pounce upon that
maid-servant—knowing what she’s subject to and what a little thing
will bring ‘em on—in that surprising manner and with that severity
that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
hanging upon that girl’s words!”
He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily
clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it
stopped. Mr. Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and
went away again.
“Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make,” said Mr. Bucket,
rapidly glancing at it, “is to let me speak a word to this young
lady in private here. And if you know of any help that you can
give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of
any one thing that’s likelier than another to bring the girl round,
do your swiftest and best!” In an instant she was gone, and he had
shut the door. “Now my dear, you’re steady and quite sure of
yourself?”
“Quite,” said I.
“Whose writing is that?”
It was my mother’s. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece
of paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and
directed to me at my guardian’s.
“You know the hand,” he said, “and if you are firm enough to read
it to me, do! But be particular to a word.”
It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
follows:
“I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the dear
one, if I could, once more—but only to see her—not to speak to
her or let her know that I was near. The other object, to elude
pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the mother for her share.
The assistance that she rendered me, she rendered on my strongest
assurance that it was for the dear one’s good. You remember her
dead child. The men’s consent I bought, but her help was freely
given.”
“‘I came.’ That was written,” said my companion, “when she rested
there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right.”
The next was written at another time:
“I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know
that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to
die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am saved from adding that
guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes
for my being found dead, but I shall die of others, though I suffer
from these. It was right that all that had sustained me should
give way at once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.”
“Take courage,” said Mr. Bucket. “There’s only a few words more.”
Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance,
almost in the dark:
“I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten
so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which
I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place where
I shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind.
Farewell. Forgive.”
Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
chair. “Cheer up! Don’t think me hard with you, my dear, but as
soon as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.”
I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and
I heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not
alarmed. The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the
letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the
letter, and where the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as
I could to these points, I went into the next room with them. Mr.
Woodcourt would have remained outside, but at my solicitation went
in with us.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her
down. They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she
might have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but
she had a plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little
wild. I kneeled on the ground beside her
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