“A rat,” says my Lady. “And they have shot him.”
Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
“No, no,” says Sir Leicester, “I think not. My Lady, do you object to the twilight?”
On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
“Volumnia?”
Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the dark.
“Then take them away,” says Sir Leicester. “Tulkinghorn, I beg your pardon. How do you do?”
Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester’s hand, and subsides into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on the opposite side of the Baronet’s little newspaper-table. Sir Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff.
“Now,” says Sir Leicester. “How has that contest gone?”
“Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.”
It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says “you” are beaten, and not “we.”
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a thing. ‘The debilitated cousin holds that it’s sort of thing that’s sure tapn slongs votes — giv’n — Mob.
“It’s the place, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, “where they wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell’s son.”
“A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had the becoming taste and perception,” observes Sir Leicester, “to decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I am glad to acknowledge.”
“Ha!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It did not prevent him from being very active in this election, though.”
Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. “Did I understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active in this election?”
“Uncommonly active.”
“Against — ”
“Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the business part of the proceedings he carried all before him.”
It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
“And he was much assisted,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, “by his son.”
“By his son, sir?” repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.
“By his son.”
“The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady’s service?”
“That son. He has but one.”
“Then upon my honour,” says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, “then upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles, the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters have — a — obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion by which things are held together!”
General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks — country’s going — Dayvle — steeple-chase pace.
“I beg,” says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, “that we may not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman — ”
“I have no intention,” observes my Lady from her window in a low but decided tone, “of parting with her.”
“That was not my meaning,” returns Sir Leicester. “I am glad to hear you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would not be — ” Sir Leicester adds, after a moment’s consideration, “dragged from the altars of her forefathers.”
These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.
“It is worthy of remark,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “however, that these people are, in their way, very proud.”
“Proud?” Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.
“I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the girl — yes, lover and all — instead of her abandoning them, supposing she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances.”
“Well!” says Sir Leicester tremulously. “Well! You should know, Mr. Tulkinghorn. You have been among them.”
“Really, Sir Leicester,” returns the lawyer, “I state the fact. Why, I could tell you a story — with Lady Dedlock’s permission.”
Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?
“No. Real flesh and blood.” Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony, “Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?”
By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be seen, perfecfly still.
“A townsman of this Mrs. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your condition, Sir Leicester.”
Sir Leicester condescendingly says, “Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn,” implying that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.
“The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl, and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her. Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been engaged to marry a young rake — he was a captain in the army — nothing connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but she gave birth to a child of which he was the father.”
By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile, perfectly still.
“The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband’s grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell’s townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of the honour done him and his daughter by the lady’s condescension; not the least. He resented the girl’s position, as if the lady had been the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock will excuse its painful nature.”
There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting with Volumnia’s. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The majority incline to the debilitated cousin’s sentiment, which is in few words — “no business — Rouncewell’s fernal townsman.” Sir Leicester generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of his own.
There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone. It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of contrast.
Chapter 41 In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Room
Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were, in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down.
There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents awaiting his notice — with his head bent low over the table, the old man’s sight for print or writing being defective at night — he opens the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool may have any need to subside, from the story he has related downstairs.
The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other characters nearer to his hand.
As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he recognizes Lady Dedlock.
He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors behind her. There is a wild disturbance — is it fear or anger? — in her eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs two hours ago.
Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as pale, both as intent.
“Lady Dedlock?”
She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two pictures.
“Why have you told my story to so many persons?”
“Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it.”
“How long have you known it?”
“I have suspected it a long while — fully known it a little while.”
“Months?”
“Days.”
He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same distance, which nothing has ever diminished.
“Is this true concerning the poor girl?”
He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding the question.
“You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried in the streets?”
So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn’s thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey eyebrows a hair’s breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.
“No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir Leicester’s unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand. But it would be a real case if they knew — what we know.”
“Then they do not know it yet?”
“No.”
“Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?”
“Really, Lady Dedlock,” Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, “I cannot give a satisfactory opinion on that point.”
And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he watches the struggle in her breast, “The power and force of this woman are astonishing!”
“Sir,” she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, “I will make it plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it, and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr. Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my great and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or I should rather say — no longer belonging to this place — I had, and if you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.
“You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too. Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will dictate. I am ready to do it.”
