Bleak House - Charles Dickens (best chinese ebook reader .txt) 📗

was I wrong or right? I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give you a turn? To throw the murder on her Ladyship.”

Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.

“And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here, which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocketbook of mine, Sir Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words ‘Lady Dedlock’ in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I stopped this very morning, and read the three words ‘Lady Dedlock, Murderess’ in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower of ladybirds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place having seen them all ‘written by this young woman? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and whatnot? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of ’em every one by this young woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration of his lady’s genius.

Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in Mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure.

“There is no doubt that her Ladyship was on the spot at the eventful period,” says Mr. Bucket, “and my foreign friend here saw her, I believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her Ladyship and George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another’s heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go into it. I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.”

“These are very long lies,” Mademoiselle interposes. “You prose great deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking always?”

“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now going to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her Ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night, when her Ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home looking⁠—why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the ocean⁠—it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket, along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and hold it steady, and I shan’t hurt you!”

In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. “That’s one,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!”

He rises; she rises too. “Where,” she asks him, darkening her large eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them⁠—and yet they stare, “where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?”

“She’s gone forrard to the Police Office,” returns Mr. Bucket. “You’ll see her there, my dear.”

“I would like to kiss her!” exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like.

“You’d bite her, I suspect,” says Mr. Bucket.

“I would!” making her eyes very large. “I would love to tear her limb from limb.”

“Bless you, darling,” says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure, “I’m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ. You don’t mind me half so much, do you?”

“No. Though you are a devil still.”

“Angel and devil by turns, eh?” cries Mr. Bucket. “But I am in my regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy. I’ve been lady’s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to the bonnet? There’s a cab at the door.”

Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice, uncommonly genteel.

“Listen then, my angel,” says she after several