Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

child!” Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.

In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense

can’t forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her

countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of

visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke—an enjoyment

expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness

of face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look,

which intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my

Lady’s mirrors when my Lady is not among them.

All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of

them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering

faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not

submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to

pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the

fashionable intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts

with a keen scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St.

James’s to their being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire

is all alive. By day guns and voices are heard ringing in the

woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants and

hangers-on pervade the village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night

from distant openings in the trees, the row of windows in the long

drawing-room, where my Lady’s picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the

chill little church is almost warmed by so much gallant company, and

the general flavour of the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate

perfumes.

The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no

contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and

virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite

of its immense advantages. What can it be?

Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to

set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel

neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays.

There are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,

swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by

other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their

noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake

into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is

troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But

is there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle

notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got

below the surface and is doing less harmless things than jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no

rational person need particularly object?

Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this

January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who

have set up a dandyism—in religion, for instance. Who in mere

lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy

talk about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in

the things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low

fellow should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after

finding it out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and

faithful by putting back the hands upon the clock of time and

cancelling a few hundred years of history.

There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,

but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world

and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be

languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who

are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to

be disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in

powder and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array

themselves in the milliners’ and tailors’ patterns of past

generations and be particularly careful not to be in earnest or to

receive any impress from the moving age.

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his

party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester

Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see

to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate

used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a

Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment

that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited

choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie

between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be

impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be

assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of

that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the

leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to

Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,

what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency

of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in

the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What

follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces

(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock)

because you can’t provide for Noodle!

On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P.,

contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of

the country—about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of

it that is in question—is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done

with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into

Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you

would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with

you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have

brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would

have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you

would have strengthened your administration by the official

knowledge and the business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of

being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!

As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences

of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and

distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but

Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the

great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no

doubt—a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be

occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as

on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and

families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are

the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can

appear upon the scene for ever and ever.

In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than

the brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in

the long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest

circles, as with the circle the necromancer draws around him—very

strange appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this

difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the

greater danger of their breaking in.

Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of

injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies’-maids, and is not

to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber

of the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and

having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn’s room,

and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.

He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park

from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he

had never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a

servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should

be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of

the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine

morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen walking

before breakfast like a larger species of rook.

Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the

library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances

down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive

him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every

night my Lady casually asks her maid, “Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?”

Every night the answer is, “No, my Lady, not yet.”

One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in

deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face

in the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing

her.

“Be so good as to attend,” says my Lady then, addressing the

reflection of Hortense, “to your business. You can contemplate your

beauty at another time.”

“Pardon! 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 Boythorn.”

“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.