Bleak House. Charles Dickens
It was your Ladyship's beauty.'
'That,' says my Lady, 'you needn't contemplate at all.'
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset,' when the bright groups of figures, which have for the last hour or two enlivened the Ghost's Walk, are all dispersed, and only Sir Leicester and my Lady remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask – if it be a mask – and carries family secrets in every limb of his body, and every crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great, or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells, is his personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
'How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?' says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands behind him, walks, at Sir Leicester's side, along the terrace. My Lady walks upon the other side.
'We expected you before,' says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation. As much as to say, 'Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!'
Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head, and says he is much obliged.
'I should have come down sooner,' he explains, 'but that I have been much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself and Boy thorn.'
'A man of a very ill-regulated mind,' observes Sir Leicester, with severity. 'An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a very low character of mind.'
'He is obstinate,' says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'It is natural to such a man to be so,' says Sir Leicester, looking most profoundly obstinate himself. 'I am not at all surprised to hear it.'
'The only question is,' pursues the lawyer, 'whether you will give up anything.'
'No, sir,' replies Sir Leicester. 'Nothing, I give up?'
'I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you would not abandon. I mean any minor point.'
'Mr. Tulkinghorn,' returns Sir Leicester, 'there can be no minor point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe that I cannot readily conceive how any right of mine can be a minor point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual, as in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.'
Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. 'I have now my instructions,' he says. 'Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble—'
'It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn,' Sir Leicester interrupts him, Ho give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished – if not,' adds Sir Leicester, after a moment's pause, 'if not hanged, drawn, and quartered.'
Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden, in passing this capital sentence; as if it were the next satisfactory thing to having the sentence executed.
'But night is coming on,' says he, 'and my Lady will take cold. My dear, let us go in.'
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr. Tulkinghorn for the first time.
'You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't imagine what association I had, with a hand like that; but I surely had some.'
'You had some?' Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
'O yes!' returns my Lady, carelessly. 'I think I must have had some. And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that actual thing – what is it! – Affidavit?'
'Yes.'
'How very odd!'
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows brightly on the panelled wall, and palely on the window-glass, where, through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in the wind, and a grey mist creeps along: the only traveller besides the waste of clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands before the fire, with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face. He looks across his arm at my Lady.
'Yes,' he says, 'I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him—'
'Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!' Lady Dedlock languidly anticipates.
'I found him dead.'
'O dear me!' remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact, as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
'I was directed to his lodging – a miserable, poverty-stricken place – and I found him dead.'
'You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn,' observes Sir Leicester. 'I think the less said—'
'Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out' (it is my Lady speaking). 'It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?'
Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head. 'Whether by his own hand—'
'Upon my honour!' cries Sir Leicester. 'Really!'
'Do let me hear the story!' says my Lady.
'Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say—'
'No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn.'
Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point; though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really – really—
'I was about to say,' resumes the lawyer, with undisturbed calmness, 'that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act; though whether by his own deliberate intention, or by mischance, can never certainly be known. The Coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally.'
'And what kind of man,' my Lady asks, 'was this deplorable creature?'
'Very difficult to say,' returns the lawyer, shaking his head. 'He had lived so wretchedly, and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour, and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and condition.'
'What did they call the wretched being?'
'They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name.'
'Not even any one who had attended on him?'
'No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him.'
'Without any clue to anything more?'
'Without any; there was,' says the lawyer meditatively, 'an old portmanteau; but – No, there were no papers.'
During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another – as was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately protest, saying, that as it is quite clear that no association in my Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he was a begging-letter writer); he trusts to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
'Certainly, a collection of horrors,' says my Lady, gathering up her mantles and furs; 'but they interest one for the moment!. Have the kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.'
Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference, and