'We are to meet as usual?'
'Precisely as usual, if you please.'
'And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?'
'As you have done so many years. I should not have made that reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never wholly trusted each other.'
She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time before asking, 'Is there anything more to be sald to-night?'
'Why,' Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his hands, 'I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my arrangements, Lady Dedlock.'
'You may be assured of it.'
'Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not.'
'I can attest your fidelity, sir.'
Both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence, towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago, and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint upon herself.
He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain.
He would think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the faithful step upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging.
The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins entering on various public employments, principally receipt of salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath and the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in holy matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing everything up with it-the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn's unconscious head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in Lincolnshire.
CHAPTER XLII
In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he had never been out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards.
He melted out of his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he melts into his own square.
Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old.
The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.
Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the doorsteps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.
'Is that Snagsby?'
'Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir, and going home.'
'Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?'
'Well, sir,' says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his head in his deference towards his best customer, 'I was wishful to say a word to you, sir.'
'Can you say it here?'
'Perfectly, sir.'
'Say it then.' The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the court-yard.
'It is relating,' says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, 'it is relating-not to put too fine a point upon it-to the foreigner, sir!'
Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. 'What foreigner?'
'The foreign female, sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night.'
'Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense.'
'Indeed, sir?' Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his hat. 'I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that.' Mr. Snagsby appears to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.
'And what can you have to say, Snagsby,' demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,
'about her?'
'Well, sir,' returns the stationer, shading his communication with his hat, 'it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is very great-at least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure-but my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and hovering-I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if I could avoid it, but hovering, sir-in the court-you know it is-now ain't it? I only put it to yourself, sir.'
Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
'Why, what do you mean?' asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'Just so, sir,' returns Mr. Snagsby; 'I was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female-which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure-caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at dinner-time. Now Guster,
