CHAPTER LV

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 hilltops, where

there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned

in full 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! Oh, 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’ve been soldiering that I haven’t

brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under

this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any

pleasure in such a discovery? It’s impossible. No, keep my secret

from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my

secret from my brother, of all men.”

“But not always, dear George?”

“Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all—though I may come to ask

that too—but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it’s ever broke to

him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish,” says the

trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, “to break it myself and be

governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems

to take it.”

As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth

of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet’s face, his mother yields her

implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.

“In all other respects, my dear mother, I’ll be as tractable and

obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am

ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,” he glances at

his writing on the table, “an exact account of what I knew of the

deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.

It’s entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in

it but what’s wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight

on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I

hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my

own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not

to have any.”

Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time

being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again

the old lady hangs upon her son’s neck, and again and again the

trooper holds her to his broad chest.

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

“I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some

business there that must be looked to directly,” Mrs. Rouncewell

answers.

“Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of

course I know you will. Why should I ask it!”

Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.

“Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.

Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the

hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand

pound in gold, my dear!” So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the

old girl’s tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.

No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce

Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping

out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and 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. Oh, 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.”

“Oh, 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?”

“Oh, 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.

Oh, 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, oh, 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,

oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been

passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to

clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady,” the old housekeeper pleads with

genuine simplicity, “I am so humble in my place and you are by nature

so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,

but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg

and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or

justice at this fearful time!”

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

from her hand.

“Am I to read this?”

“When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the

most that I consider possible.”

“I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can

affect your son. I have never accused him.”

“My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after

reading the letter.”

The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth

she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the

sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong

earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long

accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long

schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts

up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads

one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and

the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even

her wonder until now.

She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account

of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,

shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with

the word “murderess” attached.

It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground

she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before

her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have

probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her

head before she begins to understand them.

“Let him come in!”

He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from

the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.

Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud,

chilling state.

“Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from

one who has never been welcome to your ladyship”—which he don’t

complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any

particular reason on the face of things why he should be—“but I hope

when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault

with me,” says Mr. Guppy.

“Do so.”

“Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship,” Mr.

Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at

his feet, “that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned

to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my ’eart

until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,

communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your

ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps

whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson’s

wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over

which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the

distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again.”

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

“And yet I am here now,” Mr. Guppy admits. “My object being to

communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am

here.”

He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. “Nor can

I,” Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, “too

particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that

it’s no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no

interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for

my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred—I, in point

of fact, shouldn’t have darkened these doors again, but should have

seen ’em further first.”

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

with both hands.

“Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I

was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and

whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time

apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call

sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely

difficult for me to be sure that I hadn’t inadvertently led up to

something contrary to Miss Summerson’s wishes. Self-praise is no

recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man

of business neither.”

Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately

withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.

“Indeed, it has been made so hard,” he goes on, “to have any idea

what that party was up to in combination with others that until the

loss which we all deplore I was gravelled—an expression which your

ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to

consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise—a name by which

I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not

acquainted with—got to be so close and double-faced that at times it

wasn’t easy to keep one’s hands off his ’ead. 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 key-stone 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.