Chapter 55

Flight

Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great

blow, as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself

with sleep preparatory to his field-day, when, through the

night and along the freezing wintry roads, a chaise and pair comes

out of Lincolnshire, making its way towards London.

Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle

and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the

wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but, as yet, such

things are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly

unexpected. Preparations are afoot, measurements are made,

ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and their not yet united

piers desolately look at one another over roads and streams, like

brick and mortar couples with an obstacle to their union;

fragments of embankments are thrown up, and left as precipices

with torrents of rusty carts and barrows tumbling over them;

tripods of tall poles appear on hill-tops, where there are rumours

of tunnels; everything looks chaotic, and abandoned in fell

hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the night, the

post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.

Mrs Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold,

sits within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs Bagnet with her

grey cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front,

as being exposed to the weather, and a primitive sort of perch

more in accordance with her usual course of travelling; but Mrs

Rouncewell is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her

proposing it. The old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She

sits, in her stately manner, holding her hand, and, regardless of its

roughness, puts it often to her lips. “You are a mother, my dear

soul,” says she many times, “and you found out my George’s

mother!”

“Why, George,” returns Mrs Bagnet, “was always free with me,

ma’am, and when he said at our house to my Woolwich, that of all

the things my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be

a man, the comfortablest would be that he had never brought a

sorrowful line into his mother’s face, or turned a hair of her head

grey, then I felt sure, from his way, that something fresh had

brought his own mother into his mind. I had often known him say

to me, in past times, that he had behaved bad to her.”

“Never, my dear!” returns Mrs Rouncewell, bursting into tears

“My blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving

to me, was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little

wild, and went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in

letting us know about himself, till he should rise to be an officer;

and when he didn’t rise, I know he considered himself beneath us,

and wouldn’t be a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my

George, always from a baby!”

The old lady’s hands stray about her as of yore, while she

recalls, all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a

gay good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him,

down at Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he

was a young gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the

people, who had been angry with him, forgave him the moment he

was gone, poor boy. And now to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher heaves, and the quaint upright old-

fashioned figure bends under its load of affectionate distress.

Mrs Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart,

leaves the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while—not

without passing the back of her hand across her own motherly

eyes—and presently chirps up in her cheery manner:—

“So I says to George when I goes to call him in to tea (he

pretended to be smoking his pipe outside), ‘What ails you this

afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I have seen all sorts, and I

have seen you pretty often in season and out of season, abroad and

at home, and I never see you so melancholy penitent.’ ‘Why, Mrs

Bagnet,’ says George, ‘it’s because I am melancholy and penitent

both, this afternoon, that you see me so.’ ‘What have you done, old

fellow?’ I says. ‘Why, Mrs Bagnet,’ says George, shaking his head,

‘what I have done has been done this many a long year, and is best

not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to Heaven, it won’t be for

being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no more. Now,

ma’am, when George says to me that it’s best not tried to be

undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I

draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him

that afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance,

at the lawyer’s office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother

plain before him; and he runs on about that old lady till he quite

forgets himself, and paints her picture to me as she used to be,

years upon years back. So I says to George when he has done, who

is this old lady he has seen? And George tells me it’s Mrs

Rouncewell, housekeeper for more than half a century to the

Dedlock family down at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has

frequently told me before that he’s a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night, ‘Lignum, that’s his mother for five-

and-for-ty pound!’“ All this Mrs Bagnet now relates for the

twentieth time at least within the last four hours. Trilling it out,

like a kind of bird; with a pretty high note, that it may be audible

to the old lady above the hum of the wheels.

“Bless you, and thank you,” says Mrs Rouncewell. “Bless you,

and thank you, my worthy soul!”

“Dear heart!” cries Mrs Bagnet, in the most natural manner.

“No thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma’am, for being

so ready to pay ’em! And mind once more, ma’am, what you had

best do on finding George to be your own son, is, to make him—for

your sake—have every sort of help to put himself in the right, and

clear himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It

won’t do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law

and lawyers,” exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the

latter form a separate establishment, and have dissolved

partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day.

“He shall have,” says Mrs Rouncewell, “all the help that can be

got for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and

thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole

family will do their best. I—I know something, my dear; and will

make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these

years, and finding him in a jail at last.”

The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper’s manner in

saying this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands,

make a powerful impression on Mrs Bagnet, and would astonish

her but that she refers them all to her sorrow for her son’s

condition. And yet Mrs Bagnet wonders, too, why Mrs Rouncewell

should murmur so distractedly, “My Lady, my Lady, my Lady!”over and over again.

The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the

post-chaise comes rolling on through the early mist, like the ghost

of a chaise departed. It has plenty of spectral company, in ghosts

of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the

realities of day. London reached, the travellers alight; the old

housekeeper in great tribulation and confusion; Mrs Bagnet, quite

fresh and collected—as she would be, if her next point, with no

new equipage and outfit, were the Cape of Good Hope, the Island

of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any other military station.

But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is

confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her

lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its

usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and

handsome piece of old china she looks; though her heart beats

fast, and her stomacher is ruffled more than even the

remembrance of this wayward son has ruffled it these many years.

Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder

in the act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of

entreaty to him to say nothing; assenting, with a nod, he suffers

them to enter as he shuts the door.

So, George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be

alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old

housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are

quite enough for Mrs Bagnet’s confirmation; even if she could see

the mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and

doubt their relationship.

Not a rustle of the housekeeper’s dress, not a gesture, not a

word betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her

emotions. But they are very eloquent; very, very eloquent. Mrs

Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,

of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return

since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,

and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in

such touching language, that Mrs Bagnet’s eyes brim up with

tears, and they run glistening down her sun-brown face.

“George Rouncewell! O my dear child, turn and look at me!”

The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and

falls down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance,

whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts

his hands together as a child does when it says its prayers, and

raising them towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.

“My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my

favourite still, where have you been these cruel years and years?

Grown such a man, too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so

like what I knew he must be, if it pleased God he was alive!”

She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time.

All that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the

whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes

with her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the

best of old girls as she is.

“Mother,” says the trooper, when they are more composed;

“forgive me first of all, for I know my need of it.”

Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always

has done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will,

these many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has

never believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this happiness—and she is an old woman now, and can’t look to live

very long—she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she

had had her senses, as her beloved son George.

“Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my

reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a

purpose in me, too. When I left home I didn’t care much, mother—

I am afraid not a great deal—for leaving; and went away and

’listed, harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for

nobody, no not I, and that nobody cared for me.”

The trooper has dried his eyes, and put away his handkerchief:

but there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual

manner of expressing himself and carrying himself, and the

softened tone in which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a

half-stifled sob.

“So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I

had ‘listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one

time I thought I would write home next year, when I might be

better off; and when that year was out I thought I would write

home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year

was out again, perhaps I didn’t think much about it. So on, from

year to year, through a service of ten years, till I began to get older,

and to ask myself why should I ever write?”

“I don’t find any fault, child—but not to ease my mind, George?

Not a word to your loving mother, who was growing older, too?”

This almost overturns the trooper afresh; but he sets himself up

with a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.

“Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be

small consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were

you, respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance north-country papers now and then, rising to be

prosperous and famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled,

not self-made like him, but self-unmade—all my earlier

advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing

picked up but what unfitted me for most things that I could think

of. What business had I to make myself known? After letting all

that time go by me, what good could come of it? The worst was

past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a man) how you

had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me; and the

pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your

mind as it was.”

The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head; and taking one of his

powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.

“No, I don’t say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to

be so. I said just now what good could come of it? Well, my dear

mother, some good might have come of it to myself—and there

was the meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would

have purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to

Chesney Wold; you would have brought me and my brother and

my brother’s family together; you would all have considered

anxiously how to do something for me, and set me up as a

respectable civilian. But how could any of you feel sure of me,

when I couldn’t so much as feel sure of myself? How could you

help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you, an idle

dragooning chap, who was an incumbrance and a discredit to

himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my

brother’s children in the face, and pretend to set them an

example—I, the vagabond boy, who had run away from home, and

been the grief and unhappiness of my mother’s life? ‘No, George.’Such were my words, mother, when I passed this in review before

me: ‘You have made your bed. Now, lie upon it.’”

Mrs Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head

at the old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, “I

told you so!” The old girl relieves her feelings, and testifies her

interest in the conversation, by giving the trooper a great poke

between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she

afterwards repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy:

never failing, after the administration of each of these

remonstrances, to resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak

again.

“This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my

best amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it.

And I should have done it (though I have been to see you more

than once down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me),

but for my old comrade’s wife here, who I find has been too many

for me. But I thank her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs Bagnet, with

all my heart and might.”

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 have 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 recognised 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 handing 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 a 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 very 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 matter 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.”

Mr Guppy picks up his hat and rises.

“Your Ladyship, you know best, whether there’s anything in

what I say, or whether there’s nothing. Something or nothing, I

have acted up to Miss Summerson’s wishes in letting things alone,

and in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that’s

sufficient for me. In case I should be taking a liberty in putting

your Ladyship on your guard when there’s no necessity for it, you

will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I

shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now take my

farewell of your Ladyship, and assure you that there’s no danger

of your ever being waited on by me again.”

She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look;

but when he has been gone a little while she rings her bell.

“Where is Sir Leicester?”

Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library,

alone.“Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?”

Several on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,

which has been anticipated by Mr Guppy. Enough: he may go.

So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her

husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—may be

spreading while she thinks about it—and in addition to the

thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is

denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.

Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often, wished him

dead. Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation

comes upon her, like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when

she recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how

she may be represented to have sent her favourite girl away, so

soon before, merely to release herself from observation, she

shudders as if the hangman’s hands were at her neck.

She has thrown herself upon the floor, and lies with her hair all

wildly scattered, and her face buried in the cushions of a couch.

She rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and

rocks and moans. The horror that is upon her, is unutterable. If

she really were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment,

more intense.

For, as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the

deed, however subtle the precautions for its commission, would

have been closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure,

preventing her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as

those consequences would have rushed in, in an unimagined

flood, the moment the figure was laid low—which always happens

when a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be

on the watch before her, and she used to think, “if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take him from my way!”

it was but wishing that all he held against her in his hand might be

flung to the winds, and chance-sown in many places. So, too, with

the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was his death but

the keystone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins

to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling

piecemeal!

Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her,

that from this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate and

imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not

more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed,—there is no

escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication of her

shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its

height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and

whirled away, like a leaf before a mighty wind.

She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and

leaves them on her table.

“If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe that I am

wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me; for I am innocent of

nothing else that you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge.

He prepared me on that fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to

you. After he had left me, I went out, on pretence of walking in the

garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him, and

make one last petition that he would not protract the dreadful

suspense on which I have been racked by him, you do not know

how long, but would mercifully strike next morning.

“I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but

there was no reply, and I came home.“I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May you, in

your just resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on

whom you have wasted a most generous devotion—who avoids

you, only with a deeper shame than that with which she hurries

from herself—and who writes this last adieu!”

She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her

money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is

empty, opens and shuts the great door; flutters away, in the shrill,

frosty wind.

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