Bleak House

The other man repeated, 'That's all about it.'

'Was the lady crying?' I inquired.

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

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

'I hope you will not object to my asking your wife,' said I, 'how the lady looked?'

'Come, then!' he gruffly cried to her. 'You hear what she says. Gut it short, and tell her.'

'Bad,' replied the woman. 'Pale and exhausted. Very bad.'

'Did she speak much?'

'Not much, but her voice was hoarse.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'You saw it?' I exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Still on foot?' said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What is it?' said I, starting. 'Is she here?'

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

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

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

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

'Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!'

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

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

'The other?' I repeated. 'Who?'

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

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

'You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!'

These orders, and the way in which he ran about the yard, urging them, caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to with great speed.

'My dear,' said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat, and looking in again—'you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar – don't you fret and worry yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present; but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?'

I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of deciding what we ought to do; but was he sure that this was right? Could I not go forward by myself in search of – I grasped his hand again in my distress, and whispered it to him – of my own mother.

'My dear,' he answered, 'I know, I know, and would I put you wrong, do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?'

What could I say but yes!

'Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Now, are you right there?'

'All right, sir!'

'Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!'

We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come; tearing up the miry sleet and thawing snow, as if they were torn up by a waterwheel.