The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it shut up, and apparently deserted: but one of the neighbours who knew me, and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear, informed me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin of the piece of ground where the kilns were, and where the long rows of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place, which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I pushed it open.

  There were only three of them sitting at breakfast; the child lying alseep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently knew him.

  I had asked leave to enter, of course. Liz (the only name by which I knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that I had to speak, and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.

  “Liz,” said I, “I have come a long way in the night and through the snow, to inquire after a lady—”

  “Who has been here, you know,” Mr. Bucket stuck in, addressing the whole group, with a composed propitiatory face; “that’s the lady the young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know.”

  “And who told you as there was anybody here?” inquired Jenny’s husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating, to listen, and now measured him with his eye.

  “A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons,” Mr. Bucket immediately answered.

  “He has as good mind his own business, whoever he is,” growled the man.

  “He’s out of employment, I believe,” said Mr. Bucket, apologetically for Michael Jackson, “and so gets talking.”

  The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have spoken to me privately, if she had dared. She was still in this attitude of uncertainty, when her husband, who was eating with a lump of bread and fat in one hand, and his clasp-knife in the other, struck the handle of his knife violently on the table, and told her with an oath to mind her own business at any rate, and sit down.

  “I should like to have seen Jenny very much,” said I, “for I am sure she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very anxious indeed—you cannot think how anxious—to overtake. Will Jenny be here soon? Where is she?”

  The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to Jenny’s husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the latter turned his shaggy head towards me.

  “I’m not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you’ve heerd me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their place be, and it’s curous they can’t let my place be. There’d be a pretty shine made if I was to go a-wisitin them, I think. Howsoever, I don’t so much complain of you as of some others, and I’m agreeable to make you a civil answer, though I give notice that I’m not a-going to be drawed like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won’t. Where is she? She’s gone up to Lunnun.”

  “Did she go last night?” I asked.

  “Did she go last night? Ah! she went last night,” he answered, with a sulky jerk of his head.

  “But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as to tell me,” said I, “for I am in great distress to know.”

  “If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm—” the woman timidly began.

  “Your master,” said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow emphasis, “will break your neck, if you meddle with wot don’t concern you.”

  After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.

  “Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I’ll tell you wot the lady said to her. She said ‘You remember me as come one time to talk to you about the young lady as she had been a-wisiting of you? You remember me as give you something handsome for a handkercher wot she had left?’ Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young lady up at the house now? No, she warn’t up at the house now. Well, then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as we might think it, and could she rest herself where you’re a setting, for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went—it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty minutes past twelve; we ain’t got no watches here to know the time by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don’t know where she go’d. She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun, and t’other went right from it. That’s all about it. Ask this man. He heerd it all, and see it all. He knows.”

  The other man repeated, “That’s all about it.”

  “Was the lady crying?” I inquired.

  “Devil a bit,” returned the first man. “Her shoes was the worse, and her clothes was the worse, but she warn’t—not as I see.”

  The woman sat with her arms crossed, and her eyes upon the ground. Her husband had turned his seat a little, so as to face her; and kept his hammer-like hand upon the table, as if it were in readiness to execute his threat if she disobeyed him.

  “I hope you will not object to my asking your wife,” said I, “how the lady looked.”

  “Come, then!” he gruffly cried to her. “You hear what she says. Cut it short, and tell her.”

  “Bad,” replied the woman. “Pale and exhausted. Very bad.”

  “Did she speak much?”

  “Not much, but her voice was hoarse.”

  She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.

  “Was she faint?” said I. “Did she eat or drink here?”

  “Go on!” said the husband, in answer to her look. “Tell her, and cut it short.”

  “She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and tea. But she hardly touched it.”

  “And when she went from here”—I was proceeding, when Jenny’s husband impatiently took me up.

  “When she went from here, she went right away Nor’ard by the high road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn’t so. Now, there’s the end. That’s all about it.”

  I glanced at my companion; and finding that he had already risen and was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he looked full at her.

  “Now, Miss Summerson,” he said to me, as we walked quickly away. “They’ve got her Ladyship’s watch among ’em. That’s a positive fact.”

  “You saw it?” I exclaimed.

  “Just as good as saw it,” he returned. “Else why should he talk about his ‘twenty minutes past,’ and about his having no watch to tell the time by? Twenty minutes! He don’t usually cut his time so fine as that. If he comes to half-hours, it’s as much as he does. Now, you see, either her Ladyship gave him that watch, or he took it. I think she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should she give it him for?”

  He repeated this question to himself several times, as we hurried on; appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his mind.

  “If time could be spared,” said Mr. Bucket—“which is the only thing that can’t be spared in this case—I might get it out of that woman; but it’s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any fool knows that a poor creetur like her, bea
ten and kicked and scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that ill uses her, through thick and thin. There’s something kept back. It’s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.”

  I regretted it exceedingly; for she was very grateful and I felt sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.

  “It’s possible, Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it, “that her Ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and it’s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don’t come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it’s on the cards. Now, I don’t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, on these Roughs, and I don’t see my way to the usefulness of it at present. No! So far, our road, Miss Summerson, is for’ard—straight ahead—and keeping everything quiet!”

  We called at home once more, that I might send a hasty note to my guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage. The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we were on the road again in a few minutes.

  It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air was so thick with the darkness of the day, and the density of the fall, that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned—with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells—under the hoofs of the horses, into mire and water. They sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first stage, and trembled so, and was so shaken, that the driver had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.

  I could eat nothing, and could not sleep: and I grew so nervous under those delays, and the slow pace at which we travelled, that I had an unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my companion’s better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to; addressing people whom he had never beheld before, as old acquaintances; running in to warm himself at every fire he saw; talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap; friendly with every waggoner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker; yet never seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady face, and his business-like “Get on, my lad!”

  When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him, and dropping off him—plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees, as he had been doing frequently since we left Saint Albans—and spoke to me at the carriage side.

  “Keep up your spirits. It’s certainly true that she came on here, Miss Summerson. There’s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and the dress has been seen here.”

  “Still on foot?” said I.

  “Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point she’s aiming at; and yet I don’t like his living down in her own part of the country, neither.”

  “I know so little,” said I. “There may be some one else nearer here, of whom I never heard.”

  “That’s true. But whatever you do, don’t you fall a-crying my dear; and don’t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my lad!”

  The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early, and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the ploughed grounds, or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great duration; and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free from the anxiety under which I then laboured.

  As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his finger uneasily going across and across his mouth, during the whole of one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other vehicles coming towards us, what passengers they had seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger, and lift of his eyelid, as he got upon the box again; but he seemed perplexed now, when he said “Get on, my lad!”

  At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But, I was not to be down-hearted, he told me; for it was as likely as not that the next stage might set us right again.

  The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue. There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room, and left me there.

  It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On one side, to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage; and beyond that, to the by-road itself, across which the sign was heavily swinging: on the other side, to a wood of dark pine-trees. Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems of the trees, and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now welcomed me, and of my mother lying down in such a wood to die.

  I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was some little comfort. They cushioned me up, on a large sofa by the fire; and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no further tonight, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a tremble lest they should detain me there, that she soon recalled her words, and compromised for a rest of half an hour.

  A good endearing creature she was. She, and her three fair girls all so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr. Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast and some hot negus; and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made some recompense.

  Punctual to the time, at the half-hour’s end the carriage came rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed, comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, the youngest daughter—a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the first married, they had told me—got upon the carriage step, reached in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think of her to this hour as my friend.

  The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with toil enough; but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the box—I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so, when I saw him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco—was as vigilant as ever; and as quickly down and up again, when we came to any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a fa
vourite with him, for we had lamps to the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me, to see that I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head, but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.

  We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change; but I knew by his yet graver face, as he stood watching the ostler, that he had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an excited and quite different man.

  “What is it?” said I, staring. “Is she here?”

  “No, no. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody’s here. But I’ve got it!”

  The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face, and get his breath, before he spoke to me.

  “Now, Miss Summerson,” said he, beating his finger on the apron, “don’t you be disappointed at what I’m a-going to do. You know me. I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We’ve come a long way; never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!”

  There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the stables to know “if he meant up or down?”

  “Up, I tell you! Up! Ain’t it English? Up!”

  “Up?” said I, astonished. “To London! Are we going back?”

  “Miss Summerson,” he answered, “back. Straight back as a die. You know me. Don’t be afraid. I’ll follow the other, by G—”

  “The other?” I repeated. “Who?”

  “You called her Jenny, didn’t you? I’ll follow her. Bring those two pair out here, for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!”

  “You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not abandon her on such a night, and in such a state of mind as I know her to be in!” said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.