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Read books online » Fiction » Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

Book online «Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖». Author Charles Dickens



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a

hundred pound an hour to have got the start of the present time.

Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,

to follow her and find her, to save her and take her his

forgiveness. I have money and full power, but I want something

else. I want Miss Summerson.”

 

Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, “Miss Summerson?”

 

“Now, Mr. Jarndyce”—Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest

attention all along—“I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane

heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don’t often happen.

If ever delay was dangerous, it’s dangerous now; and if ever you

couldn’t afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the

time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound

apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I

am charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the

rest that’s heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes,

suspicion of murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in

ignorance of what Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated

to me, may be driven to desperation. But if I follow her in

company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young

lady that she has a tenderness for—I ask no question, and I say no

more than that—she will give me credit for being friendly. Let me

come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of putting

that young lady for’ard, and I’ll save her and prevail with her if

she is alive. Let me come up with her alone—a hard matter—and

I’ll do my best, but I don’t answer for what the best may be. Time

flies; it’s getting on for one o’clock. When one strikes, there’s

another hour gone, and it’s worth a thousand pound now instead of a

hundred.”

 

This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be

questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks

to Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his

usual principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and

keeping his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about

in the gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little

time Mr. Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will

join him directly and place herself under his protection to

accompany him where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses

high approval and awaits her coming at the door.

 

There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and

wide. Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the

streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying

under haystacks. But the figure that he seeks is not among them.

Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over;

and in shadowed places down by the river’s level; and a dark, dark,

shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all,

clings with a drowning hold on his attention.

 

Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the

handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an

enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it

and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the

little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the

brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being

scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and

the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks

like an instrument of human torture—traversing this deserted,

blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to

itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it

would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman,

too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came

through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.

CHAPTER LVII

Esther’s Narrative

 

I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the

door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying

to speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a

word or two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir

Leicester Dedlock’s. That my mother had fled, that a person was

now at our door who was empowered to convey to her the fullest

assurances of affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could

possibly find her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in

the hope that my entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed.

Something to this general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into

such a tumult of alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of

every effort I could make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem,

to myself, fully to recover my right mind until hours had passed.

 

But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley

or any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person

entrusted with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me

this, and also explained how it was that he had come to think of

me. Mr. Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian’s

candle, read to me in the hall a letter that my mother had left

upon her table; and I suppose within ten minutes of my having been

aroused I was sitting beside him, rolling swiftly through the

streets.

 

His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to

me that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer,

without confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These

were, chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother

(to whom he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had

spoken with her last, and how she had become possessed of my

handkerchief. When I had satisfied him on these points, he asked

me particularly to consider—taking time to think—whether within

my knowledge there was any one, no matter where, in whom she might

be at all likely to confide under circumstances of the last

necessity. I could think of no one but my guardian. But by and by

I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He came into my mind as connected with

his old chivalrous manner of mentioning my mother’s name and with

what my guardian had informed me of his engagement to her sister

and his unconscious connexion with her unhappy story.

 

My companion had stopped the driver while we held this

conversation, that we might the better hear each other. He now

told him to go on again and said to me, after considering within

himself for a few moments, that he had made up his mind how to

proceed. He was quite willing to tell me what his plan was, but I

did not feel clear enough to understand it.

 

We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a

by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr.

Bucket took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It

was now past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two

police officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all

like people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk;

and the place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating

and calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid

any attention.

 

A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he

whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others

advised together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket’s subdued

dictation. It was a description of my mother that they were busy

with, for Mr. Bucket brought it to me when it was done and read it

in a whisper. It was very accurate indeed.

 

The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it

out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an

outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was

done with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment;

yet nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out

upon its travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work

of writing with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came

and warmed the soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at

the fire.

 

“Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?” he asked me as his eyes

met mine. “It’s a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out

in.”

 

I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.

 

“It may be a long job,” he observed; “but so that it ends well,

never mind, miss.”

 

“I pray to heaven it may end well!” said I.

 

He nodded comfortingly. “You see, whatever you do, don’t you go

and fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything

that may happen, and it’ll be the better for you, the better for

me, the better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester

Dedlock, Baronet.”

 

He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire

warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt

a confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a

quarter to two when I heard horses’ feet and wheels outside. “Now,

Miss Summerson,” said he, “we are off, if you please!”

 

He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,

and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and

post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the

box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage

then handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had

given a few directions to the driver, we rattled away.

 

I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with

great rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost

all idea where we were, except that we had crossed and recrossed

the river, and still seemed to be traversing a lowlying,

waterside, dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by

docks and basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and

masts of ships. At length we stopped at the corner of a little

slimy turning, which the wind from the river, rushing up it, did

not purify; and I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in

conference with several men who looked like a mixture of police and

sailors. Against the mouldering wall by which they stood, there

was a bill, on which I could discern the words, “Found Drowned”;

and this and an inscription about drags possessed me with the awful

suspicion shadowed forth in our visit to that place.

 

I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the

indulgence of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of

the search, or to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I

remained quiet, but what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never

can forget. And still it was like the horror of a dream. A man

yet dark and muddy, in long swollen sodden boots and a hat like

them, was called out of a boat and whispered

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