We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at Mrs. Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took it for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
"I really don't, sir," I returned. "Perhaps Mr. Carstone--or Miss Clare--"
But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. "In-deed! Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs. Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry--AND the natives--and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."
Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is--a--I don't know that I can describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of Mrs. Jellyby."
"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard with a droll look.
"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge gravely. "I can't say that, indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the more shining qualities of his wife." Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already, Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early in the forenoon of to-morrow.
He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent round." Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
"Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr. Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
"Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know."
"I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am strange in London."
"Only round the corner," said Mr. Guppy. "We just twist up Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time, as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain't it, miss?" He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
"The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.
"Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy, putting up the steps. "On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance."
I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our destination--a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription JELLYBY.
"Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the coach-window. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!"
"Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"
"Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to something," said Mr. Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head, I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me, announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!" We passed several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs--down a whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards said he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if--I am quoting Richard again--they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
"I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, "to have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifference to me."
We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of stay-lace--like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right place.
"You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me, my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger."
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very gratifying.
"It IS gratifying," said Mrs. Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know, Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts to Africa."
This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate--
"The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs. Jellyby.
"Indeed, ma'am?"
"Certainly. With precaution," said Mrs. Jellyby. "You may go into Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with Africa."
I said, "No doubt." I meant as to Holborn.
"If you would like," said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers towards us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my amanuensis--"
The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
"--I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs. Jellyby with a sweet smile, "though my work is never done. Where are you, Caddy?"
"'Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs--'" said Caddy.
"'And begs,'" said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project--' No, Peepy! Not on my account!"
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most--the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, "Go along, you naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very much astonished at it and at Ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so little about it.
"Six o'clock!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "And our dinner hour is nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps? You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!"
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fastened up with a fork.
"You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby, looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
"If it is not being troublesome," said we.
"Oh, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is, if there IS any."
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and though the handle of Ada's went round and round with the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug with "A Present from Tunbridge Wells" on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door with Mrs. Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs. Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will between them.
All through dinner--which was long, in consequence of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in the chin--Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, "I believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have you not?" or, "If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?"--always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind, but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without saying anything.
Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to be--if I understood it--the brotherhood of humanity, and gave utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and told them in whispers "Puss in Boots" and I don't know what else until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher pretensions.
It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
"What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it, and I can't understand it at all."
"What?" asked Ada with her pretty smile.
"All this, my dear," said I. "It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives--and yet--Peepy and the housekeeping!"
Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her heart. "You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a home out of even this house."
My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she made so much of me!
"May I ask you a question?" said I when we had sat before the fire a little while.
"Five hundred," said Ada.
"Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind describing him to me?"
Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty, partly at her surprise.
"Esther!" she cried.
"My dear!"
"You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?"
"My dear, I never saw him."
"And I never saw him!" returned Ada.
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago--"a plain, honest letter," Ada said--proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable Chancery suit." She had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them, that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the utmost description Ada could give me.
It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long ago. I don't know where my thoughts had wandered when they were recalled by a tap at the door.
I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in the other.
"Good night!" she said very sulkily.
"Good night!" said I.
"May I come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same sulky way.
"Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very gloomy.
"I wish Africa was dead!" she said on a sudden.
I was going to remonstrate.
"I do!" she said "Don't talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and detest it. It's a beast!"
I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed where Ada lay.
"She is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow and in the same uncivil manner.
I assented with a smile.
"An orphan. Ain't she?"
"Yes."
"But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes, and needlework, and everything?"
"No doubt," said I.
"I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write. I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very fine, I dare say!"
I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt towards her.
"It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'M disgraceful. Pa's miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks--she's always drinking. It's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you know it was!"
"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
"You do," she said very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You do!"
"Oh, my dear!" said I. "If you won't let me speak--"
"You're speaking now. You know you are. Don't tell stories, Miss Summerson."
"My dear," said I, "as long as you won't hear me out--"
"I don't want to hear you out."
"Oh, yes, I think you do," said I, "because that would be so very unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me, and I am sorry to hear it."
"You needn't make a merit of that," said she.
"No, my dear," said I. "That would be very foolish."
She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it better not to speak.
"I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us."
In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she wanted to stay there!
"You used to teach girls," she said, "If you could only have taught me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like you so much!"
I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.
The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.

We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us back in his room, at Mrs. Jellyby's. Then he turned to me and said he assumed I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
"I don't, sir," I returned.
"Indeed! Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is a lady of remarkable strength of character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She is at present devoted to the subject of Africa. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any good work, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."
"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is - a - is the husband of Mrs. Jellyby. I never had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged in the more shining qualities of his wife." Mr. Kenge told us that as the road to Bleak House would have been very long and dark on such an evening, Mr. Jarndyce had proposed this arrangement. A carriage would be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early the next morning.
He then rang a little bell, and the inky young gentleman came in. Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether the baggage had been sent round. Mr. Guppy said yes, and a coach was waiting for us.
"Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for me to express my satisfaction in the arrangement this day concluded and my hope that it will lead to the happiness of all concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
"Where is 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "only round the corner. We'll be there in four minutes' time. This is a London particular now, ain't it, miss?" He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
"The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.
"Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy. "It seems to do you good, miss, judging from your appearance."
I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself for blushing when I had got into the coach and he had got up on to the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London, until we turned up at our destination - a narrow street of high houses like an oblong tank to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house where we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the door inscribed JELLYBY.
"One of the young Jellybys has been and got his head through the railings!" said Mr. Guppy.
"Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"
"Pray be careful, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to something," said Mr. Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle were trying to drag him back by the legs. I mentioned that it might be best to push him forward; and by this means he was happily extricated, and then began to beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared from the house except a person in clogs, who had been poking at the child with a broom. This person now appeared in the passage without the clogs, and going upstairs before Ada and me, announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!" We passed several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs with a great noise.
Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of our uneasiness at hearing the dear child's head bump down every stair, received us with perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off.
"I am very glad," said Mrs. Jellyby, "to have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr. Jarndyce."
We thanked her and sat down on a limp sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had been too much occupied with her African duties to brush her hair; and when she turned, we could not help noticing that her dress didn't meet up at the back, but was railed across with a lattice-work of corset-lace.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. A jaded and unhealthy-looking girl sat at the writing-table, biting her pen and staring at us. Nobody ever was in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured with frayed and broken slippers, she really seemed to have no article of dress that was in its proper condition.
"You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, "as usual, very busy; the African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies and private individuals all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have two hundred families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger."
I said it must be very gratifying.
"It is gratifying," said Mrs. Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of all my energies. Do you know, Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that you never turned your thoughts to Africa."
This was so unexpected that I was at a loss. I hinted that the climate-
"The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "If you would like to look over some remarks on the subject, while I finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my scribe-"
The girl at the table stopped biting her pen and gave a nod, half bashful and half sulky.
"-I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs. Jellyby with a smile, "though my work is never done. Where are you, Caddy?"
" 'Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs-' " said Caddy.
" 'And begs,' " said Mrs. Jellyby, " 'to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project-' No, Peepy!"
Peepy was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, and who now came in, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees. Mrs. Jellyby merely said serenely, "Go along, you naughty Peepy!" and proceeded with her dictation.
I ventured to pick up poor Peepy, who looked very much astonished, but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I had a general impression of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all other places and things.
"Six o'clock!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "And our dinner-hour is five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss Summerson their rooms. You will excuse me, I know, being so busy. Oh, that bad child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!"
I begged permission to retain him, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada and I had two upper rooms with a connecting door between. They were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fastened up with a fork.
"You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby, looking round for a jug, but in vain.
"If it is not being troublesome," said we.
"Oh, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is, if there is any."
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it. But all the little children had come up to the landing to look at Peepy lying on my bed. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my door had no knob; and though the handle of Ada's went round and round, it had no effect whatever on the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be very good, and I would tell them the story of Little Red Riding Hood while I dressed for dinner; which they did, and were as quiet as mice.
When we went downstairs we found a young woman with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room and choking dreadfully. It smoked so much that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour, while Mrs. Jellyby directed letters about Africa. Richard quietly told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and made me and Ada laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, stepping carefully on the torn stair-carpets. We had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage dropped everything on the table. The person in clogs, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will between them.
All through dinner - which was long, because of such accidents as the potatoes being mislaid and the handle of the corkscrew coming off - Mrs. Jellyby stayed serene. She told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited about the cultivation of coffee; others required answers, which she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write.
I was curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair after the fish was taken away, never speaking a word. It was not until we left the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of his being Mr. Jellyby entered my head. But he was Mr. Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs on his forehead and his hair all brushed back, came in, and told Ada he was a philanthropist.
This young man, besides having a great deal to say about Africa, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, "I believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as two hundred letters about Africa in a single day, have you not?" or, "Mrs. Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars at one time?" During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall as if he were in low spirits.
Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in a nest of waste paper, drank coffee and dictated to her eldest daughter. She also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, about - if I understood it - the brotherhood of humanity, and expressed some beautiful sentiments. I was not a very attentive listener, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me to ask for another story; so we sat down and told them in whispers "Puss in Boots" until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
After that I tidied our room and coaxed our very cross fire into burning. On my return downstairs, I felt that Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous.
It was nearly midnight before we could go to bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking coffee and Miss Jellyby biting her pen.
"What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I can't understand it at all. It must be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to take such pains about the natives - and yet - Peepy and the housekeeping!"
Ada laughed and put her arm around me, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature.
"You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so cheerful! And you do so much! You would make a home out of even this house."
My simple darling! It was because of the goodness of her own heart that she praised me so.
"May I ask you a question?" said I when we were sitting before the fire. "Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind describing him?"
Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty, partly at her surprise.
"Esther!" she cried. "I never saw him!"
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she remembered how the tears would come into her mother's eyes when she spoke of his noble generosity. Her cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago - "a plain, honest letter," Ada said - proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable Chancery suit." She had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal.
Richard had received a similar letter. He had seen Mr. Jarndyce once, five years ago, at Winchester school, and had told Ada that he was "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the best description Ada could give me.
It set me thinking; when Ada was asleep, I remained before the fire, wondering about Bleak House. My thoughts were recalled by a tap at the door.
I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a broken candle in a broken candlestick.
"Good night!" she said very sulkily.
"Good night!" said I.
"May I come in?" she asked unexpectedly.
"Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
She would not sit down, but stood by the fire rubbing at the ink stains on her face, and looking very gloomy.
"I wish Africa was dead!" she said suddenly. "I do! I hate it and detest it. It's a beast!"
I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be cool tomorrow. She stood pouting and frowning, but then turned softly towards the bed where Ada lay.
"She is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow. "An orphan. Ain't she?"
"Yes."
"But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes, and needlework, and everything?"
"No doubt," said I.
"I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write. I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of yourselves to come in and see me able to do nothing else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very fine, I dare say!"
I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I looked at her as mildly as I could.
"It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'm disgraceful. Pa's miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks - she's always drinking. Shame on you if you say you didn't smell her today. It was as bad as a public-house at dinner; you know it was!"
"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
"You do," she said shortly. "You do!"
"Oh, my dear!" said I. "Let me speak-"
"I don't want to hear you."
"I think you do," said I. "I did not know what you tell me because the servant did not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt you, and I am sorry to hear it."
She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. Then she stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it better not to speak.
"I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us."
In a moment, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she wanted to stay there!
"You used to teach girls," she said, "I wish you could have taught me! I am so very miserable, and I like you so much!"
I could not persuade her to do anything but move onto a ragged stool, still holding my dress. Gradually the poor tired girl fell asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I was painfully awake; but at length, my thoughts became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now it was the little mad woman, now some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.
The day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my eyes to see a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, his teeth chattering with the cold.


It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the BEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a giant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat in Lincolnshire.
For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth and seems to rend it.
Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman and Sir Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out of the yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay--within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate--only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind--her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped--but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain--two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to society.
"You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read a page in twenty miles.
"Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever."
"I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn's long effusions, I think?"
"You see everything," says Sir Leicester with admiration.
"Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men!"
"He sends--I really beg your pardon--he sends," says Sir Leicester, selecting the letter and unfolding it, "a message to you. Our stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of my memory. I beg you'll excuse me. He says--" Sir Leicester is so long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks a little irritated. "He says 'In the matter of the right of way--' I beg your pardon, that's not the place. He says--yes! Here I have it! He says, 'I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope, has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as it may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen him.'"
My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
"That's the message," observes Sir Leicester.
"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, still looking out of her window.
"Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise.
"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady with unmistakable distinctness. "Please to stop the carriage."
The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an impatient motion of my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly and walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady, says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady, how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, with an inclination of her gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is ravishing!
The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.
Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting to consider the question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.
Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester's customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
"How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir Leicester?"
"In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
"My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs. Rouncewell with another curtsy.
My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is as wearily well as she can hope to be.
But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she may have conquered, asks, "Who is that girl?"
"A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
"Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance of interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says, touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks all the prettier.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen, my Lady."
"Nineteen," repeats my Lady thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil you by flattery."
"Yes, my Lady."
My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this, not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world admires; but if my Lady would only be "a little more free," not quite so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more affable.
"'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds--only "almost" because it borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs--"that my Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of excellence she wants."
"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good grandson.
"More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are words it's not my place to use--nor so much as to hear--applied to any drawback on my Lady."
"I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"
"If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always reason to be."
"Well," says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking."
"Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt, "and I humbly ask his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller might?"
"Surely, none in the world, child."
"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I have an inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed. But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is holding forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language; consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for having attracted my Lady's attention, and she pours them out with such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon stage of that performance.
Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed--absolutely caressed--by my Lady on the moment of her arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! "And do you know how pretty you are, child?" "No, my Lady." You are right there! "And how old are you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!" Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady's mirrors when my Lady is not among them.
All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James's to their being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my Lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of its immense advantages. What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got below the surface and is doing less harmless things than jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no rational person need particularly object?
Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who have set up a dandyism--in religion, for instance. Who in mere lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few hundred years of history.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new, but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves in the milliners' and tailors' patterns of past generations and be particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress from the moving age.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle--supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can't provide for Noodle!
On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in question--is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no doubt--a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very strange appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the greater danger of their breaking in.
Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room, and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time. He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?"
Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
"Be so good as to attend," says my Lady then, addressing the reflection of Hortense, "to your business. You can contemplate your beauty at another time."
"Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty."
"That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask--if it be a mask--and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
"How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands behind him, walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My Lady walks upon the other side.
"We expected you before," says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation. As much as to say, "Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!"
Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is much obliged.
"I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that I have been much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself and Boythorn."
"A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester with severity. "An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a very low character of mind."
"He is obstinate," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking most profoundly obstinate himself. "I am not at all surprised to hear it."
"The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up anything."
"No, sir," replies Sir Leicester. "Nothing. I give up?"
"I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you would not abandon. I mean any minor point."
"Mr. Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain."
Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "I have now my instructions," he says. "Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble--"
"It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn," Sir Leicester interrupts him, "TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished--if not," adds Sir Leicester after a moment's pause, "if not hanged, drawn, and quartered."
Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory thing to having the sentence executed.
"But night is coming on," says he, "and my Lady will take cold. My dear, let us go in."
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr. Tulkinghorn for the first time.
"You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely had some."
"You had some?" Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
"Oh, yes!" returns my Lady carelessly. "I think I must have had some. And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that actual thing--what is it!--affidavit?"
"Yes."
"How very odd!"
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where, through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller besides the waste of clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face. He looks across his arm at my Lady.
"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him--"
"Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!" Lady Dedlock languidly anticipates.
"I found him dead."
"Oh, dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
"I was directed to his lodging--a miserable, poverty-stricken place--and I found him dead."
"You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I think the less said--"
"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?"
Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head. "Whether by his own hand--"
"Upon my honour!" cries Sir Leicester. "Really!"
"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
"Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say--"
"No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really--really--
"I was about to say," resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness, "that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally."
"And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
"Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition."
"What did they call the wretched being?"
"They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name."
"Not even any one who had attended on him?"
"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him."
"Without any clue to anything more?"
"Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old portmanteau, but--No, there were no papers."
During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another--as was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner--again, next day--again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble confidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.

It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris to Chesney Wold. There, according to the fashionable world, they will be entertaining a brilliant and distinguished circle of the elite.
The broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, again spanned gracefully, makes a fine view from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park, chasing the shadows of the clouds. It looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with patches of brightness. Across the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light.
Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester start for home. With much jingling and whip-cracking, their carriage rattles out of the yard of the hotel and canters out of Paris.
To tell the truth, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only last Sunday, when poor families were playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; or walking in the Elysian Fields, or through the gloomy Cathedral - only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies everywhere, but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been felt. Fling Paris back into the distance, then!
Sir Leicester is generally complacent, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage and reviews his importance to society.
"You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my Lady.
"Nothing in it, though."
"I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn's long effusions, I think?"
"You see everything," says Sir Leicester with admiration.
"Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men!"
"He sends," says Sir Leicester, unfolding the letter, "a message to you. Our stopping to change horses drove it out of my memory. He says-" Sir Leicester adjusts his eye-glass - "he says 'In the matter of the right of way-' I beg your pardon, that's not the place. Here it is! He says, 'I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady. Will you do me the favour to mention that I have something to tell her on her return in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen him.'"
My Lady looks out of her window. "I should like to walk a little," she says.
"Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester in surprise.
"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady distinctly. "Please stop the carriage."
The carriage is stopped, and the door is opened. My Lady alights and walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester is left behind. A minute or two elapses before he catches up with her. She smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
The rattle and clatter of travel continue for three days. Their courtly politeness to each other at the hotels where they stay is the theme of general admiration. Though my Lord is a little aged for my Lady, says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, one can see at a glance that they love each other. One observes my Lord help my Lady from the carriage. One observes my Lady graciously incline her head to him. It is ravishing!
The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like small fry. It is always hard upon Sir Leicester; nevertheless, his dignity gets over it, and he goes on with my Lady to Chesney Wold.
Through the cold sunlight and the sharp wind, as the day declines and the Ghost's Walk resigns itself to coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to break out into violent debate above them. The carriage rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly through some of the windows, though not many as yet. But the brilliant and distinguished circle will soon change that.
Mrs. Rouncewell is waiting and receives Sir Leicester's handshake with a deep curtsy.
"How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir Leicester?"
"In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
"My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs. Rouncewell with another curtsy.
My Lady signifies briefly that she is as wearily well as she can hope to be.
But Rosa is behind the housekeeper; and my Lady asks, "Who is that girl?"
"A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
"Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance of interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says, touching her shoulder.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and glances up, and glances down, and doesn't know where to look, but looks all the prettier.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen, my Lady."
"Nineteen," repeats my Lady thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil you by flattery."
"Yes, my Lady."
My Lady taps her cheek with delicate gloved fingers and goes on to the staircase.
That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this with some pride, being unsure only about the Lady's affability. If my Lady were not quite so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more affable.
"'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds, "that my Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of excellence she lacks."
"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says Watt, who has come to visit again, he is such a good grandson. "She is proud, is she not?"
"If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always reason to be."
"I suppose, grandmother," says Watt, "that even with the family and their guests here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two?"
"Surely, none in the world, child."
"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I long to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed. But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks; for my Lady's maid is holding forth about her at this moment with great energy.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of thirty-two, a large-eyed woman who would be handsome but for a certain feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face. She has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives. With her tasteful dress and little adornments, she seems like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. She has good English, and no lack of words to shower upon Rosa for having attracted my Lady's attention. She pours them out with grim ridicule at dinner.
Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, has been in my Lady's service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed by my Lady on the moment of her arriving at the house! Oh, how droll!
In short, Mademoiselle Hortense can't forget it; but for days afterwards, shows her silent enjoyment of the joke by her tightness of face and thin compressed lips. Her sideways look is frequently reflected in my Lady's mirrors when my Lady is not there.
All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now. They reflect handsome faces, simpering faces, youthful faces, faces of seventy that will not submit to be old; all the faces that have come to pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants fill the village and the Dedlock Arms. On Sunday the chill little church is almost warmed by so much gallant company.
The brilliant and distinguished circle includes within it much education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it. What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now to set the dandy fashion; no exquisites swooning in opera boxes or beaus whom it takes four men to shake into his buckskins. But some ladies and gentlemen in the distinguished circle have set up a dandyism - in religion, for instance. In want of an emotion, they have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the vulgar lacking faith in things, and would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by putting back the hands of time and cancelling a few hundred years of history.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be languid and pretty. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas. For whom even the fine arts must array themselves in the patterns of the past and be particularly careful not to be in earnest.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his political party, who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock, after dinner, that a debate is not what it used to be; the House is not what it used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was; and the country is shipwrecked, gone to pieces!
Across the table, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends that the shipwreck of the country is due entirely to the wrong people being in charge. It is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle that Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and his retinue, are the great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no doubt - who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses; but Boodle and Buffy, and their followers and families, are the chief actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
Chesney Wold is so full that only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber, plainly but comfortably furnished, with an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room, and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time. He is not come yet.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances down the table for the vacant place that would be set for him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?"
Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in deep thought after this reply, until she sees her own brooding face in the glass, and Hortense curiously observing her.
"Be so good as to attend to your business," says my Lady.
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards them at his usual methodical pace, wearing his usual expressionless mask.
"How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. He walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My Lady walks upon the other side.
"We expected you before," says Sir Leicester graciously, as if to say, "Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence. We bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!"
Mr. Tulkinghorn says he is much obliged.
"I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but I have been much engaged with those suits between yourself and Boythorn."
"A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester with severity. "A dangerous person of low character."
"He is obstinate," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking profoundly obstinate himself.
"The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up anything. I don't mean anything of importance. I mean any minor point."
"Mr. Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. In fact, I cannot readily conceive how any right of mine can be a minor point."
Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. "Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble-"
"It is the character of such a mind," Sir Leicester interrupts him, "to give trouble. But night is coming on, and my Lady will take cold. My dear, let us go in."
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr. Tulkinghorn for the first time.
"You sent me a message about the person whose writing I happened to inquire about. I had quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I think I must have had some. Did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that thing - what is it! - affidavit?"
"Yes."
"How very odd!"
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands before the fire, shading his face. He looks at my Lady.
"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him dead."
"Oh, dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
"I was directed to his lodging - a miserable, poverty-stricken place - and I found him dead."
"Excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I think the less said the better."
"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?"
Mr. Tulkinghorn nods. "Whether by his own hand-"
"Really!" cries Sir Leicester.
"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady. "Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
Sir Leicester gallantly concedes.
"I was about to say," resumes the lawyer calmly, "that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. He had unquestionably died of his own act, however, though whether deliberately or by mischance can never be known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally."
"And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
"Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better."
"What did they call the wretched being?"
"No one knew his name."
"Not even anyone who had attended on him?"
"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him."
"Without any clue to anything more?"
"Without any; there was an old portmanteau," says the lawyer meditatively, "but there were no papers."
During every word of this short dialogue, Lady Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn have looked very steadily at one another. Sir Leicester has looked at the fire. He now says haughtily that he trusts to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
Mr. Tulkinghorn holds it open while she passes out, with her usual fatigued manner and insolent grace.
They meet again at dinner, and again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always silent, oddly out of place and yet perfectly at home. They appear to take no notice of each other. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, mistrustful of some great secret; and what each would give to know how much the other knows - all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.