“Why you see, miss,” returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into persuasive action—and such is his natural gallantry, that he had almost said, “my dear”; “it ain’t easy to answer those questions at the present moment. Not at the present moment. I’ve kept myself on this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” whom Mr. Bucket takes into the conversation in right of his importance, “morning, noon, and night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don’t think I could have had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I could answer your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been traced. And I hope that he may find it”; Mr. Bucket again looks grave; “to his satisfaction.”
The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler’ll be executed—zample. Thinks more interest’s wanted—get man hanged presentime—than get man place ten thousand a year. Hasn’t a doubt—zample—far better hang wrong fler than no fler.
“You know life, you know, sir,” says Mr. Bucket, with a complimentary twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, “and you can confirm what I’ve mentioned to this lady. You don’t want to be told, that, from information I have received, I have gone to work. You’re up to what a lady can’t be expected to be up to. Lord! especially in your elevated station of society, miss,” says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at another narrow escape from my dear.
“The officer, Volumnia,” observes Sir Leicester, “is faithful to his duty, and perfectly right.”
Mr. Bucket murmurs, “Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.”
“In fact, Volumnia,” proceeds Sir Leicester, “it is not holding up a good model for imitation, to ask the officer any such questions as you have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them into execution. Or,” says Sir Leicester, somewhat sternly, for Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence; “or who vindicate their outraged majesty.”
Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in general), but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for the darling man whose loss they all deplore.
“Very well, Volumnia,” returns Sir Leicester. “Then you cannot be too discreet.”
Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case—a beautiful case—and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to supply in a few hours.”
“I am very glad indeed to hear it,” says Sir Leicester. “Highly creditable to you.”
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, very seriously, “I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit, and prove satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see, miss,” Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, “I mean from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite.”
Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.
“Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families,” says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside. “I have had the honour of being employed in high families before; and you have no idea—come, I’ll go so far as to say not even you have any idea, sir,” this to the debilitated cousin, “what games goes on!”
The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a protestation of boredom yawns, “Vayli”—being the used-up for “very likely.”
Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here majestically interposes with the words, “Very good. Thank you!” and also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they must take the consequences. “You will not forget, officer,” he adds, with condescension, “that I am at your disposal when you please.”
Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if tomorrow morning, now, would suit, in case he should be as for’ard as he expects to be? Sir Leicester replies, “All times are alike to me.” Mr. Bucket makes his three bows, and is withdrawing, when a forgotten point occurs to him.
“Might I ask, by the by,” he says in a low voice, cautiously returning, “who posted the Reward-bill on the staircase.”
“I ordered it to be put up there,” replies Sir Leicester.
“Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if I was to ask you why?”
“Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject see any objection—”
Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws: closing the door on Volumnia’s little scream, which is a preliminary to her remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue Chamber.
In his fondness for society, and his adaptability to all grades, Mr. Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire—bright and warm on the early winter night—admiring Mercury.
“Why, you’re six foot two, I suppose?” says Mr. Bucket.
“Three,” says Mercury.
“Are you so much? But then, you see, you’re broad in proportion and don’t look it. You’re not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain’t. Was you ever modelled now?” Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head.
Mercury never was modelled.
“Then you ought to be, you know,” says Mr. Bucket; “and a friend of mine that you’ll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor, would stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for the marble. My Lady’s out, ain’t she?”
“Out to dinner.”
“Goes out pretty well every day, don’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Not to be wondered at!” says Mr. Bucket. “Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the same way of life as yourself?”
Answer in the negative.
“Mine was,” says Mr. Bucket. “My father was first a page, then a footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an innkeeper. Lived universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career, and so it was. I’ve a brother in service, and a brother-in-law. My Lady a good temper?”
Mercury replies, “As good as you can expect.”
“Ah!” says Mr. Bucket, “a little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! What can you anticipate when they’re so handsome as that? And we like ’em all the better for it, don’t we?”
Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a man of gallantry, and can’t deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a violent ringing at the bell. “Talk of the angels,” says Mr. Bucket. “Here she is!”
The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning, and wears two beautiful bracelets. Either their beauty, or the beauty of her arms, is particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager eye, and rattles something in his pocket—halfpence perhaps.
Noticing him at this distance, she turns an inquiring look on the other Mercury who has brought her home.
/> “Mr. Bucket, my Lady.”
Mr. Bucket makes a leg, and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over the region of his mouth.
“Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?”
“No, my Lady, I’ve seen him!”
“Have you anything to say to me?”
“Not just at present, my Lady.”
“Have you made any new discoveries?”
“A few, my Lady.”
This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave; past murderous groups of statuary, repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wall; past the printed bill, which she looks at going by; out of view.
“She’s a lovely woman, too, she really is,” says Mr. Bucket, coming back to Mercury. “Don’t look quite healthy though.”
Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from headaches.
Really? That’s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two hours, when she has them bad. By night, too.
“Are you sure you’re quite so much as six foot three?” asks Mr. Bucket, “begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?”
Not a doubt about it.
“You’re so well put together that I shouldn’t have thought it. But the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling.—Walks by night, does she? When it’s moonlight, though?”
O yes. When it’s moonlight! Of course. O, of course! Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
“I suppose you ain’t in the habit of walking, yourself?” says Mr. Bucket. “Not much time for it, I should say?”
Besides which, Mercury don’t like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
“To be sure,” says Mr. Bucket. “That makes a difference. Now I think of it,” says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands, and looking pleasantly at the blaze, “she went out walking, the very night of this business.”
“To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.”
“And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.”
“I didn’t see you,” says Mercury.
“I was rather in a hurry,” returns Mr. Bucket, “for I was going to visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea—next door but two to the old original Bun House—ninety year old the old lady is, a single woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the time. Let’s see. What time might it be? It wasn’t ten.”
“Half-past nine.”
“You’re right. So it was. And if I don’t deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?”
“Of course she was.”
Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to get on with upstairs; but he must shake hands with Mercury in acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he—this is all he asks—will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties?
*
CHAPTER 54
SPRINGING A MINE
Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning, and prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and marmalade, on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these strengthening matters, and having held subtle conference with his familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury “just to mention quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he’s ready for me, I’m ready for him.” A gracious message being returned, that Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment; and stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the blazing coals.
Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is; as a man may be with weighty work to do; but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face, he might be a famous whist-player for a large stake—say a hundred guineas certain—with the game in his hand, but with a high reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card, in a masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket, when Sir Leicester appears; but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes slowly to his easy-chair, with that observant gravity of yesterday, in which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the idea, a touch of compassion.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation, and the indignation from which I have recently suffered, have been too much for me. I am subject to—gout”; Sir Leicester was going to say indisposition, and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket palpably knows all about it; “and recent circumstances have brought it on.”
As he takes his seat with some difficulty, and with an air of pain, Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large hands on the library-table.
“I am not aware, officer,” Sir Leicester observes, raising his eyes to his face, “whether you wish us to be alone; but that is entirely as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would be interested—”
“Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, with his head persuasively on one side, and his forefinger pendant at one ear like an ear-ring, “we can’t be too private, just at present. You will presently see that we can’t be too private. A lady, under the circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock’s elevated station of society, can’t but be agreeable to me; but speaking without a view to myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can’t be too private.”
“That is enough.”
“So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket resumes, “that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in the door.”
“By all means.” Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that precaution; stooping on his knee for a moment, from mere force of habit, so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in from the outside.
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed it, and collected proof against the person who did this crime.”
“Against the soldier?”
“No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier.”
Sir Leicester looks astounded, and inquires, “Is the man in custody?”
Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, “It was a woman.”
Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates, “Good Heaven!”
“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” Mr. Bucket begins, standing over him with one hand spread out on the library-table, and the forefinger of the other in impressive use, “it’s my duty to prepare you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you are a gentleman; and I know what a gentleman is, and what a gentleman is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock, when it must come, boldly and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. If there’s a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away to Julius Caesar—not to go beyond him at present—have borne that blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family credit. That’s the way you argue, and that’s the way you act, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.”
Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair, and grasping the elbows, sits looking at him with a stony face.
“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “thus preparing you, let
me beg of you not to trouble your mind, for a moment, as to anything having come to my knowledge. I know so much about so many characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less, don’t signify a straw. I don’t suppose there’s a move on the board that would surprise me; and as to this or that move having taken place, why my knowing it is no odds at all; any possible move whatever (provided it’s in a wrong direction) being a probable move according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don’t you go and let yourself be put out of the way, because of my knowing anything of your family affairs.”
“I thank you for your preparation,” returns Sir Leicester, after a silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature; “which I hope is not necessary, though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so good as to go on. Also”; Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow of his figure; “also, to take a seat, if you have no objection.”
None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow. “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come to the point. Lady Dedlock—”
Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat, and stares at him fiercely. Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.
“Lady Dedlock, you see she’s universally admired. That’s what her Ladyship is; she’s universally admired,” says Mr. Bucket.
“I would greatly prefer, officer,” Sir Leicester returns, stiffly, “my Lady’s name being entirely omitted from this discussion.”
“So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but—it’s impossible.”
“Impossible?”
Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s altogether impossible. What I have got to say is about her Ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns on.”
“Officer,” retorts Sir Leicester, with a fiery eye, and a quivering lip, “you know your duty. Do your duty; but be careful not to overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring my Lady’s name into this communication, upon your responsibility—upon your responsibility. My Lady’s name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!”
The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White) Page 120