The Solitary House (164 page)

To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.

And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence; that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be got; that he must act, in this serious plight, as he shall be advised to act; and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise to think only of his poor old mother’s anxiety and suffering until he is released, or he will break her heart.

“Mother, ’tis little enough to consent to,” returns the trooper, stopping her with a kiss; “tell me what I shall do, and I’ll make a late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you’ll take care of my mother, I know?”

A very hard poke from the old girl’s umbrella.

“If you’ll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the best advice and assistance.”

“And, George,” says the old lady, “we must send with all haste for your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me—out in the world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don’t know much of it myself—and will be of great service.”

“Mother,” returns the trooper, “is it too soon to ask a favour?”

“Surely not, my dear.”

“Then grant me this one great favour. Don’t let my brother know.”

“Not know what, my dear?”

“Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can’t bear it; I can’t make up my mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me, and has done so much to raise himself while I’ve been soldiering, that I haven’t brass enough in my composition, to see him in this place and under this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any pleasure in such a discovery? It’s impossible. No, keep my secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve, and keep my secret from my brother, of all men.”

“But not always, dear George?”

“Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all—though I may come to ask that too—but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it’s ever broke to him that his Rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish,” says the trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, “to break it myself and be governed, as to advancing or retreating, by the way in which he seems to take it.”

As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet’s face, his mother yields her implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.

“In all other respects, my dear mother, I’ll be as tractable and obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,” he glances at his writing on the table, “an exact account of what I
knew of the deceased, and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair. It’s entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in it but what’s wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not to have any.”

Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again the old lady hangs upon her son’s neck, and again and again the trooper holds her to his broad chest.

“Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?”

“I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some business there, that must be looked to directly,” Mrs. Rouncewell answers.

“Will you see my mother safe there, in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of course I know you will. Why should I ask it!”

Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.

“Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand pound in gold, my dear!” So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the old girl’s tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.

No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion, and handling Mrs. Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off; arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family, and falling to washing the greens, as if nothing had happened.

My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth, studying her so leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell. What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?

“Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. O, my Lady, may I beg a word with you?”

What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner, and look at her with such strange mistrust?

“What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath.”

“O, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son—my youngest, who went away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison.”

“For debt?”

“O no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful.”

“For what is he in prison then?”

“Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as—as I am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn.”

What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?

“Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But think of my dear son wrongfully accused.”

“
I
do not accuse him.”

“No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger. O Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say it!”

What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the person she petitions, to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? Her Lady’s handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear.

“My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in my old age, and the step upon the Ghost’s Walk was so constant and so solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last night, my Lady, I got this letter.”

“What letter is it?”

“Hush! Hush!” The housekeeper looks round, and answers in a frightened whisper: “My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don’t believe what’s written in it, I know it can’t be true,
I am sure and certain that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, O my dear Lady, think of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your friends; and all who admire you—and all do—as a beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves, who can’t be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, O pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in this family which she dearly loves and relent, and help to clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady,” the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, “I am so humble in my place, and you are by nature so high and distant, that you may not think what I feel for my child; but I feel so much, that I have come here to make so bold as to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us, if you can do us any right or justice at this fearful time!”

Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter from her hand.

“Am I to read this?”

“When I am gone, my Lady, if you please; and then remembering the most that I consider possible.”

“I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve, that can affect your son. I have never accused him.”

“My Lady, you may pity him the more, under a false accusation, after reading the letter.”

The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth she is not a hard lady naturally; and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion, and keep down reality; so long schooled for her own purposes, in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart; like flies in amber, and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over
the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless; she had subdued even her wonder until now.

She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account of the discovery of the body, as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with the word Murderess attached.

It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground, she knows not; but it lies where it fell, when a servant stands before her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her head before she begins to understand them.

“Let him come in!”

He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr. Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, chilling state.

“Your Ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from one who has never been welcome to your Ladyship—which he don’t complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any particular reason on the face of things, why he should be; but I hope when I mention my motives to your Ladyship, you will not find fault with me,” says Mr. Guppy.

“Do so.”

“Thank your Ladyship. I ought first to explain to your Ladyship,” Mr. Guppy sits on the edge of a chair, and puts his hat on the carpet at his feet, “that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned to your Ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my art until erased by circumstances over which I had no control, communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your Ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson’s wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your Ladyship again.”

And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.

“And yet I am here now,” Mr. Guppy admits. “My object being to communicate to your Ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am here.”

He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly.

“Nor can I,” Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, “too particularly request your Ladyship to take particular notice that it’s no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for my promise to Miss Summerson, and my keeping of it sacred—I, in point of fact, shouldn’t have darkened these doors again, but should have seen ’em further first.”

Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair with both hands.

“Your Ladyship will remember when I mention it, that the last time I was here, I run against a party very eminent in our profession, and whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely difficult for me to be sure that I hadn’t inadvertently led up to something contrary to Miss Summerson’s wishes. Self-praise is no recommendation; but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man of business neither.”

Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately withdraws his eyes from her face, and looks anywhere else.

“Indeed, it has been made so hard,” he goes on, “to have any idea what that party was up to in combination with others, that until the loss which we all deplore, I was gravelled—an expression which your Ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise—a name by which I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your Ladyship is not acquainted with—got to be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn’t easy to keep one’s hands off his ed. However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic turn, and has your Ladyship’s portrait always hanging up in his room), I have now reasons for an apprehension, as to which I come to put your
Ladyship upon your guard. First, will your Ladyship allow me to ask you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don’t mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss Barbary’s old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a Guy?”

“No!”

“Then I assure your Ladyship that such visitors have been here, and have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half-an-hour’s turn afterwards to avoid them.”

“What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand you. What do you mean?”

“Your Ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to your Ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown upon it
is
blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or making.”