CHAPTER XL

National and Domestic

England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle

would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in, and there being

nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there

has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting

between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did

not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle

and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England

must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle,

now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous

national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle’s making the

timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he

scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle,

he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce

him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while

it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas

Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down

to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has

been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well

observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the

marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to

care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and

marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days

before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the

danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest

possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not

only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in

with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his

brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet.

Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly

in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is

available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself

upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia

being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns,

and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself

black in the face that she does neither—plainly to the advancement

of her glory and morality—the London season comes to a sudden end,

through all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist

Britannia in those religious exercises.

Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though

no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be

expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and

others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And

hence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up

and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and

through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that

everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread,

curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen

cleared for action—all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock

dignity.

This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations

are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many

appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured

forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in

possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this

gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of

the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so

find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without

them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the

reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.

Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at

this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of

gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,

overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen

Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the

shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled

into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in

his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a

fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred

years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very

like her—casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two

centuries—shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of

honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and

other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it

ripples as it glows.

But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and

shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age

and death. And now, upon my Lady’s picture over the great

chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it

pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or

hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker

rises shadow on the wall—now a red gloom on the ceiling—now the

fire is out.

All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved

solemnly away and changed—not the first nor the last of beautiful

things that look so near and will so change—into a distant phantom.

Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the

garden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses

as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to

separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines

behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among

high cathedral arches fantastically broken.

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more

than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,

stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in

the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time

for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a

pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon

the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy

staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour

has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy

movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads

inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the

long drawing-room upon my Lady’s picture is the first to come, the

last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into

threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every

breath that stirs.

“She is not well, ma’am,” says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell’s

audience-chamber.

“My Lady not well! What’s the matter?”

“Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma’am, since she was last here—I

don’t mean with the family, ma’am, but when she was here as a bird of

passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept

her room a good deal.”

“Chesney Wold, Thomas,” rejoins the housekeeper with proud

complacency, “will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no

healthier soil in the world!”

Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably

hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of

his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and

retires to the servants’ hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.

This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening,

down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and

down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.

Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men

with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the

country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an

auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless

disposition and never do anything anywhere.

On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A

better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at

dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the

other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and

there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard

to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent;

and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her

French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time

almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner,

or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national

occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is

constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and

unpensioning country.

My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and

being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all

the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other

melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir

Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be

wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be

received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he

moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.

Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,

away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and

hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for

the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester

holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no

occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily

Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state

of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that

Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.

“How are we getting on?” says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. “ARE

we safe?”

The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will

throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has

just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright

particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.

“Volumnia,” replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, “we

are doing tolerably.”

“Only tolerably!”

Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own

particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near

it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who

should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must

not be understood as a common expression, “Volumnia, we are doing

tolerably.”

“At least there is no opposition to YOU,” Volumnia asserts with

confidence.

“No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many

respects, I grieve to say, but—”

“It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!”

Volumnia’s finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir

Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to

himself, “A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally

precipitate.”

In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock’s

observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always

delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale

order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to

him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending

down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, “You will have the

goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and

to send them home when done.”

“I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown

a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of

a most determined and most implacable description.”

“W-r-retches!” says Volumnia.

“Even,” proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins

on sofas and ottomans, “even in many—in fact, in most—of those

places in which the government has carried it against a faction—”

(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the

Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position

towards the Coodleites.)

“—Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be

constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without

being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,” says Sir Leicester,

eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,

“hundreds of thousands of pounds!”

If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too

innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well

with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and

pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, “What for?”

“Volumnia,” remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.

“Volumnia!”

“No, no, I don’t mean what for,” cries Volumnia with her favourite

little scream. “How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!”

“I am glad,” returns Sir Leicester, “that you do mean what a pity.”

Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people

ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.

“I am glad, Volumnia,” repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these

mollifying sentiments, “that you do mean what a pity. It is

disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and

without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me ‘what for?’

let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good

sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere.”

Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect

towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary

expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be

unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some

graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the

Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High

Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of

the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight

gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.

“I suppose,” observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover

her spirits after her late castigation, “I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn

has been worked to death.”

“I don’t know,” says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, “why Mr.

Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don’t know what Mr.

Tulkinghorn’s engagements may be. He is not a candidate.”

Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could

desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,

suggests, by somebody—to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester

is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of

his assistance.

Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its

cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the

park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer’s name was mentioned.

A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now

observes from his couch that man told him ya’as’dy that Tulkinghorn

had gone down t’ that iron place t’ give legal ’pinion ’bout

something, and that contest being over t’ day, ’twould be highly

jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should ’pear with news that Coodle man

was floored.

Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,

that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns

her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.

Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so

original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing

all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded

that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,

and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with

candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock

delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.

“He has not been here once,” she adds, “since I came. I really had

some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had

almost made up my mind that he was dead.”

It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker

gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady’s face, as if she

thought, “I would he were!”

“Mr. Tulkinghorn,” says Sir Leicester, “is always welcome here and

always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and

deservedly respected.”

The debilitated cousin supposes he is “’normously rich fler.”

“He has a stake in the country,” says Sir Leicester, “I have no

doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on

a footing of equality with the highest society.”

Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.

“Good gracious, what’s that?” cries Volumnia with her little withered

scream.

“A rat,” says my Lady. “And they have shot him.”

Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.

“No, no,” says Sir Leicester, “I think not. My Lady, do you object to

the twilight?”

On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.

“Volumnia?”

Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the

dark.

“Then take them away,” says Sir Leicester. “Tulkinghorn, I beg your

pardon. How do you do?”

Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his

passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester’s hand, and subsides

into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on

the opposite side of the Baronet’s little newspaper-table. Sir

Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will

take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would

rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf

about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile

takes a pinch of snuff.

“Now,” says Sir Leicester. “How has that contest gone?”

“Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in

both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.”

It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no

political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says “you” are

beaten, and not “we.”

Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a

thing. ‘The debilitated cousin holds that it’s sort of thing that’s

sure tapn slongs votes—giv’n—Mob.

“It’s the place, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the

fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, “where they

wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell’s son.”

“A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had

the becoming taste and perception,” observes Sir Leicester, “to

decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments

expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in

this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I

am glad to acknowledge.”

“Ha!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It did not prevent him from being very

active in this election, though.”

Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. “Did I

understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active

in this election?”

“Uncommonly active.”

“Against—”

“Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and

emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the

business part of the proceedings he carried all before him.”

It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that

Sir Leicester is staring majestically.

“And he was much assisted,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, “by

his son.”

“By his son, sir?” repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.

“By his son.”

“The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady’s service?”

“That son. He has but one.”

“Then upon my honour,” says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause

during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, “then

upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,

the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters

have—a—obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion

by which things are held together!”

General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is

really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in

and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks—country’s

going—Dayvle—steeple-chase pace.

“I beg,” says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, “that we may

not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My

Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman—”

“I have no intention,” observes my Lady from her window in a low but

decided tone, “of parting with her.”

“That was not my meaning,” returns Sir Leicester. “I am glad to hear

you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your

patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these

dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in

such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve

her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably

would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would

not be—” Sir Leicester adds, after a moment’s consideration,

“dragged from the altars of her forefathers.”

These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference

when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in

reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little

stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.

“It is worthy of remark,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “however, that these

people are, in their way, very proud.”

“Proud?” Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.

“I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the

girl—yes, lover and all—instead of her abandoning them, supposing

she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances.”

“Well!” says Sir Leicester tremulously. “Well! You should know, Mr.

Tulkinghorn. You have been among them.”

“Really, Sir Leicester,” returns the lawyer, “I state the fact. Why,

I could tell you a story—with Lady Dedlock’s permission.”

Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is

going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?

“No. Real flesh and blood.” Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and

repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony,

“Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars

have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They

exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady

Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?”

By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking

towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be

seen, perfectly still.

“A townsman of this Mr. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel

circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter

who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great

lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your

condition, Sir Leicester.”

Sir Leicester condescendingly says, “Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” implying

that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral

dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.

“The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,

and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.

Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she

had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been

engaged to marry a young rake—he was a captain in the army—nothing

connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but

she gave birth to a child of which he was the father.”

By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the

moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile,

perfectly still.

“The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a

train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to

discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on

her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how

difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be

always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you

may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband’s

grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell’s

townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be

patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden

underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly

took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of

the honour done him and his daughter by the lady’s condescension; not

the least. He resented the girl’s position, as if the lady had been

the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock

will excuse its painful nature.”

There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting

with Volumnia’s. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever

was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The

majority incline to the debilitated cousin’s sentiment, which is in

few words—“no business—Rouncewell’s fernal townsman.” Sir Leicester

generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a

sequence of events on a plan of his own.

There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept

at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and

this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.

It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for

candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and

then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes

forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in

the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for

something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of

which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked

after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective

by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of

contrast.