25. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 916-989

Chapter 60: Perspective through Chapter 67: The Close of Esther's Narrative

As one might expect from the shock and the exposure to the elements she has endured, Esther becomes ill, though not for a long time. When Esther recovers he tells her that he plans to stay on in London for as much as six months, because "Ada stands much in need of you." Jarndyce is concerned that, because of his estrangement from Richard, he has little contact with the wards in Jarndyce, so he cautions Esther, as he says he cautioned Woodcourt, not to bring up the subject of the case with Ada and Richard, lest she alienate herself from them: "She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance of another separation from a friend."

Then he mentions Mrs Woodcourt, who has been a guest at his house in London for some time. Esther admits that she finds her "more agreeable than she used to be," and that she hasn't harped on the Woodcourt pedigree as much as she used to. So he proposes to ask Mrs Woodcourt to stay a while longer. Esther has some mixed feelings about this that she can't articulate to herself, given that she doesn't want to admit that she is still in love with Woodcourt, but she agrees. She asks Jarndyce if Woodcourt still has plans to try his profession in another country, and he tells her that in about half a year there is to be an opening for "a medical attendant for the poor" in Yorkshire, and that Woodcourt is a strong candidate for it.

So Esther resumes regular visits to Ada and Richard, and on one of them meets Miss Flite, who has just been to see Ada. She tells Esther that Richard hasn't returned from the court yet, and that when she left he was in conference with Mr Vholes. She urges Esther, "Don't like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!" She has named Richard her executor, she says, "if I should wear out, he will be able to watch that judgment." Her previous executor was Gridley, "But he wore out." And then she mentions that she has added two birds to her collection and named them "the Wards in Jarndyce." Esther recalls, "Her manner of running over the names of her birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, quite chilled me."

Richard brings Vholes to dinner with him, and the lawyer takes Esther aside to sound her out on how ill Richard is looking. But his manner is "So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser, and there were something of the Vampire in him." Vholes also comments that he thinks the marriage of Richard and Ada is "very ill-advised," to which Esther retorts that it would be much better "if Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which you are engaged with him." Vholes "inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even that." His defense is that Richard "had laid down the principle of watching his own interests; and that when a client of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I have carried it out; I do carry it out." Esther can only reflect that she "well understood Mr Vholes's scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability."

She observes of Richard, "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." Richard sees Mr Vholes out. "On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it, that it struck me he had begun to doubt Mr Vholes."

Woodcourt arrives, and takes Richard out for a walk, leaving Esther alone with Ada, who tells her she is perfectly aware of Richard's condition and their financial plight. "But when I married Richard I as quite determined, Esther, if Heaven would help me, never to show him that I grieved for what he did, and so to make him unhappy." And then she adds, "And something else supports me, Esther." She is pregnant. (Dickens doesn't say so in those words, of course, and the way in which Ada delivers the news is curiously oblique, as if designed to avoid shocking the most squeamish of Victorian readers.) But she can't help feeling dread when she looks at Richard: "That he may not live to see his child."

On one of Esther's visits Skimpole is there, and realizing what a potential drain on Richard and Ada's meager resources he can be, Esther decides to pay him a visit. She informs him that Richard is "in very embarrassed circumstance," which only delights Skimpole because he is, too. She hesitates to ask him outright not to go there anymore, but Skimpole anticipates the request: "Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly not. Why should I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure." Esther is "disconcerted" by Skimpole's backward logic, and then emboldened to bring up the matter of his ratting on Jo. He blithely falls back into the old "I'm just a child" routine, cheerfully admitting his irresponsibility. So Esther says "that it was not right to betray my guardian's confidence for a bribe." Skimpole retorts, "I can't be bribed." He doesn't understand money, so he has no idea of its value, therefore, he argues, bribing him is impossible. And he weaves an airy justification for turning Jo over to Bucket that is perfectly logical if based on the premise that Skimpole is a child and therefore by nature incapable of responsibility.

After Skimpole accompanies her home, Esther says, she never saw him again. Jarndyce broke with him, and he died five years later, leaving a diary and letters from which a biography was constructed. "It was considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It was this. 'Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is the Incarnation of Selfishness.'"

The months pass, and one day after visiting Richard and Ada, Esther goes to the place where she usually meets Jarndyce for the return home. She is accompanied by Woodcourt, but Jarndyce is late, and after half an hour Woodcourt walks her home. When they get there, both Jarndyce and Mrs Woodcourt are out. Woodcourt takes the opportunity of being alone with Esther to declare his love for her. She reflects, "O, too late to know it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I had. Too late." She tells him that she is not free to accept him, but "never believe ... that while my heart beats, it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been beloved by you." Esther also learns that he has accepted the position in Yorkshire, which Jarndyce helped him obtain. When she wishes him "Good night" and "good-bye," he understands her meaning: "The first, until we meet to-morrow; the second, as a farewell to this theme between us for ever."

Yeah, well, we'll see about that. Again, having locked himself into Esther's point of view, Dickens shows his uncertainty about how to handle the Woodcourt-Esther-Jarndyce triangle. The omniscient narrator could have presented the irony of Esther's situation -- love vs. respect, duty vs. passion -- without some of the mawkishness attendant on Esther's self-consciousness, as well as the awkwardness of her withholding an outcome she knows too well. We feel a genuine sympathy for Elizabeth when she thinks she has lost Darcy or Emma when she thinks she has lost Mr Knightley, but that's because Jane Austen has been able to view the situation with some measure of objectivity. Esther's emotion here seems false and sentimental by contrast.

So of course what Esther does is go to her room and cry and then take out Jarndyce's proposal letter, which, she says, she knows by heart. And then the next day to keep "as busy as possible," repressing her emotions. (Though still crabbing about Charley's inability to learn grammar.) Jarndyce congratulates her on how well she handles the household finances: In fact, he does it twice, repeating the sentence "There never was such a Dame Durden ... for making money last." His praise reminds us that Esther is not marrying Jarndyce so much as she is marrying Bleak House -- which becomes a key point later. Finally, she announces, "I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please." She leaves the decision up to him, and when he proposes "Next month?" she agrees.

They are interrupted by the appearance of Mr Bucket, who brings with him "an old man in a black skull-cap, unable to walk" and therefore carried in a chair. They are introduced to Smallweed, and are informed that in rummaging through the papers at Krook's Smallweed has discovered another Jarndyce will. Jarndyce refuses to examine it, however, holding to his refusal to become involved in the case, but promises Smallweed that he will be remunerated for discovering it. Jarndyce and Esther go to Kenge's office, where the lawyer tells them that "it is a Will of later date than any in the suit. It appears to be all in the Testator's handwriting. It is duly executed and attested." It is "a perfect instrument!" Its effect would be to reduce Jarndyce's share of the estate in the favor of Richard and Ada. Vholes is summoned, and he agrees that it is "a very remarkable document" and "a very important document," and that it should be introduced in court when the term begins next month.

Meanwhile, Mr George, who has been at Chesney Wold tending to the recuperating Sir Leicester, goes to "the iron country farther north" to see his brother, and learns how prominent a name Rouncewell is there, which almost makes him back off from the encounter. But at the factory, which is "a place to make a man's head ache," in his opinion, he encounters his nephew, who is "devilish like me!" George thinks. He asks his nephew to take him to see Mr Rouncewell, and when the nephew asks what name he should tell his father, "George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers, 'Steel.'"

Presented to Rouncewell, George claims to have been in the army with Rouncewell's brother, but the ironmaster recognizes him and embraces him. Rouncewell tells George that he has come on an auspicious day: He is about to announce Watt's engagement to Rosa, who is leaving for Germany as part of her education tomorrow: The wedding will be in a year. George is astonished by his swift acceptance into the family, but balks when Rouncewell proposes to find a job for him in the business. He is also concerned that his return will disadvantage Rouncewell's children: He wants their mother to "scratch" him out of her will. Rouncewell assures him that their mother would never do such a thing, but if he feels so strongly about it, he can dispose of any inheritance however he sees fit, which George accepts. As for a job in the business, "I am a kind of a Weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular garden.... But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold -- where there's more room for a Weed than there is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides."

George also asks his brother to send a letter he has written to Esther, but didn't want to mail to her from Chesney Wold because he was afraid the associations with the place would pain her. In it he apologizes for turning over to Tulkinghorn the paper in Hawdon's handwriting. Finally, the brothers part, "the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country."

Jarndyce has given Esther two hundred pounds for the wedding preparations, with the understanding that the wedding would not take place until after the court hearing on the new will. Jarndyce goes to Yorkshire "on Mr Woodcourt's business," and sends for Esther. When she arrives, he tells her that he had wanted to do something to thank Woodcourt for "his humanity to poor unfortunate Jo, his inestimable service to my young cousins, and his value to us all," so he has found a house for him and he wants Esther to look it over, since she is so experienced as a housekeeper. Esther is so touched by the generosity, she tells us, that she starts to cry. Jarndyce tells her "I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress of Bleak House."

She cries again that night, she tells us, "but I hope it was with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure," and she repeats the words of Jarndyce's proposal letter twice, as a reminder of her duty. In the morning they tour the house, which is a perfect replica of "all the pretty objects, my little tastes and fancies, my little methods and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them, my odd ways everywhere." She is a little disturbed, she says, at the thought that it might remind Woodcourt of her, and "what he believed he had lost." Finally, Jarndyce tells her, there's the name of the house: "We went out of the porch; and he showed me written over it, BLEAK HOUSE."

He tells her, "I had no doubt of your being contented and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with whom you would be happier." Woodcourt had confided in him, but he hadn't confided in Woodcourt until yesterday. He had also taken Mrs Woodcourt "into a separate confidence," and had invited her to stay with them so she would get to know and appreciate Esther. And when Woodcourt made his declaration of love to Esther, "he spoke with my knowledge and consent -- but I gave him no encouragement, not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too miserly to part with a scrap of it." So now Woodcourt enters. "My husband -- I have called him by that name full seven happy years now -- stood at my side."

Jarndyce's renunciation is barely credible, and only because we have never really known Jarndyce: We have seen him only through Esther's eyes. It exists as a plot device, and what satisfactions we may derive from it are from the outcome of a story, the resolution of a prickly dilemma.

From here on out, the novel largely consists of tying up loose ends. Guppy is one of those loose ends: a character so prominent in the narrative that he needs to be disposed of one way or another. So when Esther returns to London, she finds that he has called on her during her absence. She agrees to receive him, and he arrives with his mother and his "particular friend, Mr Weevle. that is to say, my friend has gone by the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling." Guppy informs them that his apprenticeship is over and he is now "admitted ... on the roll of attorneys," and that he is setting up housekeeping in Lambeth, where Jobling, his clerk, and his mother will also reside. And so now he wants to renew his proposal to Esther.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Magnanimous Conduct of Mr Guppy (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Jarndyce has been listening and responding to all of this on Esther's behalf.

"I take it upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, "to reply to your proposals on the part of Miss Summerson. She is very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good evening, and wishes you well." 

Guppy is uncertain whether this signifies "acceptance, or rejection, or consideration," and Jarndyce says, "decided rejection." Whereupon Mrs Guppy indignantly orders Jarndyce out of his own house, and has to be bodily ushered out by Guppy and Jobling.

Court resumes, and Esther and Woodcourt decide to be present at the hearing on the new will. "Richard was extremely agitated, and was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported." But on the way, Esther and Woodcourt are stopped by Caddy Jellyby, who is on her way to one of her dancing classes, so they are late arriving at the court. They find, to their amazement, that there is a great crowd that seems to be amused at something. They find that Jarndyce and Jarndyce is "over for good." They assume that this means there has been a ruling in favor of the new will, but then they meet Kenge and Vholes, who tell them that the will hasn't even been discussed. Finally Woodcourt figures out what they're saying: the estate has been found to be entirely absorbed by the costs of litigating it, and "thus the suit lapses and melts away."

Woodcourt realizes, too, what this will mean to Richard. Vholes tells them that he left Richard still in the courtroom, and then "gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of this client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away." Woodcourt sends Esther to Jarndyce with the news, and then goes to find Richard. In the afternoon, Jarndyce accompanies Esther to Richard and Ada's, where Ada tells her that Woodcourt had found Richard "sitting in a corner of the court ... like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away, and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home."

Richard is week but looks "handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day." He welcomes Esther, and promises to be at her wedding if he can stand. He dozes for a while, and then notices Jarndyce waiting in the hall and asks who it is. Richard admits him and Jarndyce comes in and puts his hand on Richard's. "'O sir,' said Richard, 'you are a good man, you are good man!' and burst into tears for the first time." He tells Jarndyce that he would like to see Esther and Woodcourt's house. "If I could be moved there when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there, sooner than anywhere." He talks of visiting the old Bleak House as well, and then of starting a new life: "'I will begin the world!' said Richard, with a light in his eyes." Esther notices that Woodcourt "drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly life up his hand to warn my guardian." He speaks of being "a guide to my unborn child," and asks Ada to forgive him. She kisses him and he dies.

When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to me, and told me that she had given her birds their liberty.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Mausoleum at Chesney Wold (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

At Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester is "invalided, bent, and almost blind, but of a worthy presence yet -- riding with a stalwart man beside him, constant to his bridle-rein." He still carries on his feud with Boythorn, but Boythorn is really humoring the old baronet, who doesn't know "how near together he and his antagonist have suffered, in the fortunes of two sisters; and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him."

Mr George has taken up lodging in the keeper's house where Esther took shelter from the rain and had her first encounter with her mother, and Phil Squod stays busy polishing "anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish." The house is mostly shut up, and is not open to visitors anymore. "Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her face and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the long evenings," fighting off yawns; "passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have died away from the place in Lincolnshire, and yielded it to dull repose."

Ada gives birth to a boy who is named Richard, and goes to live at the old Bleak House. Esther and Woodcourt have two daughters. Charley marries a miller, and her little sister, Emma, takes over as Esther's maid. Their brother, Tom, is apprenticed to the miller. Caddy gives the dancing lessons now, because Prince is lame. Their daughter is deaf and dumb. Mrs Jellyby has turned against Africa because the King of Borrioboola tried "to sell everybody -- who survived the climate -- for Rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament."

Esther is still in love with Ada: Richard, Ada's son, "says that he has two mamas, and I am one."

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Alistair McGowan as Kenge, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Sheila Hancock as Mrs Guppy, Ian Richardson as the Lord Chancellor, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite.

24. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 866-915

Chapter 57: Esther's Narrative through Chapter 59: Esther's Narrative

Jarndyce wakes Esther to tell her that Bucket wants her to accompany him in the search for her mother. Bucket reads her the letter Lady Dedlock left behind, and she agrees to go with him.

She watches as Bucket makes inquiries of various policemen on the street, including a harrowing moment when he stops near the river where she sees on the wall a posted notice with "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." Bucket assures her that he is only being thorough in his investigation. And so they set out again into the night, following a lead that takes them on the road to Saint Albans and Bleak House.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Night (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Near Saint Albans, Bucket makes more inquiries and when he brings Esther a cup of tea he tells her that Lady Dedlock had been seen there, going on foot, at eight or nine that night. At Bleak House he tells her that she should ask if anyone has stopped there to ask for her or Jarndyce. As they climb the hill to the house, he "reminded me that I had come down it one night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor Jo: whom he called Toughey." She is surprised that he should know this, until Bucket explains that she had passed him on the road. Bucket had come there to look for Jo, on commission from Tulkinghorn to prevent Jo from talking any more about the veiled lady. His task was to make sure that Jo stayed his distance from London. "I was regularly turned on my back when I found him taken up by your establishment."

At the house, Bucket asks her, "Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room, when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" Esther realizes that he's talking about Skimpole. It was Skimpole, he tells her, who told him that Jo was staying at Bleak House, and who accepted five pounds for showing Bucket where Jo was sleeping. Esther observes, "I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr Skimpole towards my guardian, and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence." Bucket advises her, "Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after you own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can.... Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail."

None of the staff at Bleak House recalls anyone asking for Esther, so they proceed to the brickmakers' cottage. They are greeted with the usual suspicion, though Jenny, the mother of the dead child, is not there. Esther "became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not help bursting in tears." She begins to ask the other woman about Lady Dedlock, but Bucket interrupts to say that he knows she has been there, intimidating them into the truth. Esther asks where Jenny has gone, and the other woman's husband silences her with threats, but Jenny's husband tells them that Jenny has gone to London. The lady was there, and rested for a while. "Then she went -- it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time by, nor yet clocks." Then Jenny went to London, and the lady went in the opposite direction: "Nor'ard by the high road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so."

As they leave, Bucket tells Esther that the men in the cottage have Lady Dedlock's watch: "Else why should he talk about his 'twenty minutes past,' and about his having no watch to tell the time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as that. If he comes to half hours, it's as much as he does." But he wonders why Lady Dedlock would give him her watch. He suspects that Lady Dedlock sent Jenny to London with a message, and decides that they should continue in the northward direction the brickmaker indicated.

It begins snowing hard, and the roads are difficult. Bucket stops frequently to make inquiries, and is able to say that a woman, dressed like Lady Dedlock, has been spotted on the road, still on foot. But eventually he is surprised that he has lost track of the woman. They stop at an inn, and when Esther faints she is taken to a room to recover. Then they continue until Bucket realizes something and reverses course, to Esther's astonishment. He intends to follow Jenny's path back to London. He urges Esther to trust him, though she is distressed at the thought of abandoning the search for her mother.

In London rumors are already flying about Lady Dedlock's disappearance, though "It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently." Sir Leicester "can speak a little, though with difficulty and indistinctness," and although he has been advised to rest, he can't sleep, constantly asking if there is any news from Bucket.

Mrs Rouncewell stays by him, but she confides her fears to her son George: "When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me -- and I may say at me too -- as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked her down." George scoffs at the old legend, but Mrs Rouncewell is convinced that "it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is breaking up."

When Mrs Rouncewell goes to take care of things, such as keeping the fires lit in Lady Dedlock's room, Volumnia sits with Sir Leiceseter. It's a calculated move: "Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her there, there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else." When Mrs Rouncewell returns, Volumnia compliments her on the military bearing of her son, which confuses Sir Leicester until Mrs Rouncewell explains that Volumnia is referring to her son George. This causes Sir Leicester to break his silence: "George? You son George come home, Mrs Rouncewell?" He asks to see him, and is moved to tears when he enters. George helps Sir Leicester sit up straighter in the bed, and the baronet asks him to stay by his side. Under Sir Leicester's questioning, George expressed his desire to "remain unknown in general" because "I am not much to boast of." But when Sir Leicester comments that George has been a soldier "and a faithful one," George says, "I have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."

Now Sir Leicester wants to make it known that there has been only "a slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself" and that the circumstances of it are "important only to ourselves." So he calls Mrs Rouncewell, George, and Volumnia to witness a statement, "that I am on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever of complaint against her." And, particularly directing himself at Volumnia, "If you ever say less than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me." He continues to insist, "I revoke no disposition I have made in her favour." It is a "formal array of words" that "might have have at any other time, as it has often had, something ludicrous in it; but at this time it is serious and affecting." (Dickens knows that he has gone much too stagey here.)

As night comes on, Sir Leicester becomes "worse; restless, uneasy, and in great pain." But he refuses to let them light candles, and Mrs realizes "that he is striving to uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late." Through the night, Mrs Rouncewell and George keep vigil, having sent the servants to bed, though Volumnia makes her maid stay up with her as she busies herself doing nothing. "The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague; it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, 'Look what I am bringing you, who watch there! Who will tell him!'"

Esther and Bucket reach the outskirts of London about three a.m. and transfer to a hackney coach. Esther is soaked through, but Bucket praises her effusively. She notes that Bucket seems "to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in London," and he stops frequently to consult with police officers. At about five-thirty they reach Chancery Lane where they proceed on foot through the icy streets. Along the way they encounter Woodcourt, who is astonished to find Esther "out at this hour, and in such weather!" Woodcourt puts his cloak around Esther, and tells her that he has been sitting up with Richard since about ten last night. Richard is "not ill, but not quite well," but he was feeling "depressed and faint," so Ada sent for Woodcourt, who helped revive his spirits and get him to sleep some.

Bucket tells them that they are going to Snagsby's, where the servant, Guster, seems to have some new information that will help them. Unfortunately, Guster has also gone into one of her fits. Bucket asks Woodcourt, "Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want." Mr Snagsby leads them to the sitting room where Mrs Snagsby is waiting, "with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face." Bucket has Esther sit by the fire and puts her wet shoes to dry on the fender, then tries to smooth-talk Mrs Snagsby into cooperation, telling her, "Go and see Othello acted. That's the tragedy for you."

Mrs Snagsby doesn't get the reference to her jealousy, but Bucket persists, "you're what I call an intellectual woman -- with your soul too large for your body," and reminding her that they had seen each other earlier at the Dedlocks, informs Mrs Snagsby that Esther is the young lady who "was talked of in that circle." Esther observes, "Mrs Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the time." He tells Mrs Snagsby that Jo "was mixed up in the same business, and no other," and that she formed some mistaken impressions because of it.

"Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes her to-night, and is seen a speaking ot your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant -- knowing what she's subject to, and what a little thing will bring 'em on -- in that surprising manner, and with that severity, that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a Life may be hanging upon that girl's words!"

Woodcourt enters, having found the paper in question, which he gives to Bucket, who sends Mrs Snagsby in with Woodcourt to tend to Guster. Bucket hands the paper to Esther, who identifies the handwriting as her mother's. In it, Lady Dedlock explains that she went to Saint Albans on the hope of seeing Esther once more, though "not to speak to her, or let her know that I was near," and "to elude pursuit, and to be lost." She asks Esther not to blame Jenny for the part she played in the deception. Then there is a later addition to the letter, in which she says she knows she is going to die and that it is right "that I should die of terror and my conscience." In a final section, she adds, "The place where I shall lie down, if I can yet get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive."

Bucket tells Esther to get her shoes on and be ready to go out again, but first they need to find out how the letter came into Guster's hands. Guster, constantly appealing to Mrs Snagsby not to be angry, explains that she had been out on an errand and when she came back she found "a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house." The woman told Guster that she had lost her way and wanted directions to "the poor burying-ground ... where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate." Esther notices the look of alarm on Bucket's face when he hears that. Guster realized, "She meant the burying-ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping stuff -- that you came home and told us of, Mr Snagsby." And then the woman gave her the letter and asked her to deliver it to Esther at Mr Jarndyce's. But when Guster came inside, "Mrs Snagsby came behind me from somewhere, and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."

They hurry out, and Esther recalls the hallucinatory character of their walk to the burying-ground, "and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real." When they reach their destination, "On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying -- Jenny, the mother of the dead child." Woodcourt and Bucket stop Esther from rushing forward, and Bucket asks her to "think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage." Esther listens as he explains that Jenny and Lady Dedlock exchanged clothes, and that Lady Dedlock had returned to the city while Jenny "only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive, and then turned across country, and went home."

But Esther is not ready to process the truth of what Bucket is telling her, so they let her go on by herself, hearing one of them say, "Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours." And Esther discovers that the body is that of her mother.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Morning (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Phil Davis as Smallweed, Burn Gorman as Guppy, Richard Cant as Mercury, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Charlie Brooks as Jenny, Katie Angelou as Charley Neckett, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare.

23. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 816-865

Chapter 54: Springing a Mine through Chapter 56: Pursuit

Sir Leicester agrees to meet with Bucket in the library, excusing himself because he is "not well.... I am subject to -- gout." Sir Leicester hesitates about specifying the illness but realizes that "Mr Bucket palpably knows all about it." He suggests that Volumnia wishes to join them, too, but Bucket quickly puts an end to that idea. After checking that the door is locked, and that the key prevents anyone from peeking in, Bucket gets to the point: "I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed it, and collected proof against the person who did this crime." And it wasn't George: "It was a woman." Then he ceases to be so direct, preparing Sir Leicester for the revelations to come. But when he mentions Lady Dedlock, "Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat, and stares at him fiercely."

Bucket presses on, however, telling Sir Leicester, "She is the pivot it all turns on." Sir Leicester's anger continues: "My Lady's name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!" Still Bucket proceeds, telling Sir Leicester that Tulkinghorn "long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of Lady Dedlock." Sir Leicester says he would have killed Tulkinghorn himself if he had "dared to breathe them to me." But Bucket continues, telling him that Tulkinghorn's suspicions grew from Lady Dedlock's awareness of "the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person, who had been her lover before you courted her, and who ought to have been her husband." The man subsequently died, Bucket continued, and Tulkinghorn "suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging, and his wretcheder grave, alone and in secret."

He then tells of the trick played on Jo in Tulkinghorn's office, in which Hortense appeared in the clothes that Lady Dedlock had borrowed from her, confirming Tulkinghorn's suspicions. He then suggests that Sir Leicester ask his wife whether, after Tulkinghorn left their house on the night of his murder, "she didn't go down to his chambers with the intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it." If she denies it, he tells the baronet, "tell her that it's no use; that Inspector Bucket knows it, and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though he's not in the army now) , and knows that she knows she passed him, on the staircase."

Sir Leicester has turned pale, "and Mr Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds." He informs Sir Leicester of his suspicion that Tulkinghorn was holding this information over Lady Dedlock, threatening to reveal it to her husband.

But then Bucket is interrupted by the sound of a commotion in the hall. He listens, and recognizing what it's all about, suggests that they "let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen," urging him to remain silent while he deals with them. Sir Leicester agrees, and admits two footmen carrying a man in a chair, accompanied by another man and two women. Bucket identifies the man in the chair as Smallweed, who identifies the others as Mr and Mrs Chadband and Mrs Snagsby. Smallweed proceeds to tell Sir Leicester that he found letters at Krook's "from the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed Honoria" -- the implication being that that's Lady Dedlock's name. Smallweed is there because he wants the letters, and asks if Sir Leicester isn't concerned about them, "Not with Captain Hawdon and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain?" And he implies that Lady Dedlock murdered Tulkinghorn for them.

But Bucket is a match for Smallweed, and produces the letters "from a mysterious part of his coat." Smallweed lays claim to them, and says he wants five hundred pounds for them. "'No you don't; you mean fifty,' says Mr Bucket, humorously." They proceed to bargain a little, until Bucket turns his attention to Chadband, who launches into one of his perorations until Bucket makes him come to the point and introduce his wife, who tells them, "I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her Ladyship's daughter. I was in the service of her Ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her Ladyship brought upon her" -- Mrs Chadband lays "a bitter stress on the word 'Ladyship.'"

Then Bucket turns to Mrs Snagsby, whose presence there is at best tangential, except that she is convinced that the whole affair has something to do with her husband deceiving her and that he was the father of Jo. Bucket "has seen through the transparency of Mrs Snagsby's vinegar at a glance," so he ignores her and turns his attentions again to Smallweed and the Chadbands. He chides them for making a racket in the hall, rings for the footmen, and has them escorted out.

He turns to Sir Leicester and says that the letters in question can "be bought pretty cheap," if he wishes, but first there's the matter of apprehending the murderer, who "is now in this house." He rings for the footman who escorts Mademoiselle Hortense into the room. He informs Sir Leicester that Hortense has been a lodger in Bucket's for several weeks, and he informs her that he's taking her into custody for Tulkinghorn's murder. He then tells Sir Leicester about Hortense's hatred of Lady Dedlock for discharging her -- which Hortense disputes, as she does everything Bucket says, claiming, "I discharge myself." He cautions her to be silent, that anything she says can be used against her, but she's incapable of that. He continues to tell of her claim on Tulkinghorn for her participation in the masquerade in Tulkinghorn's chamber that revealed Lady Dedlock as the woman whom Jo showed to Hawdon's grave. And that while she was Bucket's lodger, she persisted in harassing Tulkinghorn and, to get to him, Snagsby.

After the murder, Bucket says, he arrested George because there was enough evidence for him to do so, but he was not convinced of the man's guilt. Then he went home, where Hortense was having supper with Mrs Bucket, and was persuaded by Hortense's exaggerated "respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn" and when he "saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!" Hortense claimed that she had been to the theater that night, and Bucket says that he has discovered that she was there "both before the deed and after it." So realizing that she was very calculating, he set a trap for her. Mrs Bucket was to continue to tell Hortense that he was convinced that George was the murderer.

But Hortense, he says, went too far. She began trying to manipulate the evidence to show that Lady Dedlock had killed Tulkinghorn. "Sir Leicester rises from his chair, and staggers down again." Hortense began writing letters to Bucket indicating that Lady Dedlock was the murderer, but Mrs Bucket was spying on her as she wrote them, and now has the letter paper and the ink as evidence.

Both Lady Dedlock and George were at Tulkinghorn's the night of the murder, and Bucket is certain that Hortense saw them from where she was waiting. "I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold." Mrs Bucket has the rest of the paper that Hortense tore up to make the wadding. Mrs Bucket had also accompanied Hortense to the funeral procession for Tulkinghorn, and afterward, Hortense suggested that they go to tea at a place on the edge of London. Near the tea house, there is a small body of water, and Hortense left Mrs Bucket for a short while on the pretense of finding her pocket-handkerchief; "she was rather a long time gone, and came back a little out of wind." Bucket had the pond dragged, and the gun was retrieved from it.

So Bucket puts the handcuffs on her, and although she struggles, raging all the while about Bucket and his wife, he manages to take her away. When they are gone, Sir Leicester collapses, his thoughts on his wife. "And, even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and compassion rather than reproach."

Meanwhile, Mrs Bagnet is returning by chaise from Lincolnshire with Mr George's mother. "Railroads shall soon traverse this country," Dickens observes, which the note tells us puts the date of the events in Bleak House somewhere in the late 1830s.  George's mother is Mrs Rouncewell, and he is the wayward son who left to join the army and hasn't been heard from since. George had seen Mrs Rouncewell at Tulkinghorn's office, and in talking about her has made Mrs Bagnet realize that she is his mother. Mrs Bagnet tells her that George is determined not to have a lawyer, but "'It won't do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers,' exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter form a separate establishment, and have dissolved partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day." (Dickens can do irony when he puts his mind to it and has the right voice for it.)

When they reach London, they enter George's cell quietly. He "is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone [and] does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Mrs Bagnet Returns From Her Expedition (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Finally, Mrs Rouncewell speaks: "George Rouncewell! O my dear child, turn and look at me!" And the usual reconciliation scene proceeds. George expresses his regret for not contacting her over the years, saying that he had put it off so long that it no longer seemed to matter, and that when he heard about his brother's success he was ashamed of his own lack of it. He was afraid that they would try to "set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of you feel sure of me, when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?" Mrs Rouncewell wants to send for his brother now, but he asks her not to: He wants to be the one to make contact with his brother and to see his reaction for himself.

Mrs Rouncewell takes her leave and goes to the Dedlocks' town house, where she proceeds to Lady Dedlock's room. She tells her that she has found her lost son in prison for murdering Tulkinghorn. "Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear." Mrs Rouncewell also tells her that last night "the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so solemn that I never heard the like in all these years." And then, she says, "I got this letter." She gives it to Lady Dedlock with a plea to help free her son.

When she is gone, Lady Dedlock reads it: "a printed account of the discovery of the body, as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through the heart, and underneath is written her own name, with the word Murderess attached." She drops the letter. Then a servant announces that Mr Guppy is there to see her. She admits him. In his roundabout way, Guppy finally gets to the point that he is there to warn her that Smallweed and the Chadbands have been there this morning, and he is certain that "those letters I was to have brought to your Ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were.... That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or making."

After he leaves, she rings for a servant who confirms Guppy's story of the visitors. "So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published -- may be spreading while she thinks about it -- and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy." Tulkinghorn's death was "the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal!" She is convinced "there is no escape but in death," and she sits down and writes a letter to her husband in which she tells him she went to Tulkinghorn's that night to plead with him. "I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but there was no reply, and I came home." She "writes this last adieu!" then dresses, leaving her jewels and her money and goes out "in the shrill frosty wind."

Volumnia is the one who discovers the unconscious Sir Leicester on the floor of the library. "He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman; somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself." When he regains consciousness he is unable to speak, but Mrs Rouncewell realizes that he wants a slate to write on. He asks about Lady Dedlock and they tell him she has gone out. He wants to know where, and they bring him her letter, which causes him to fall unconscious again. When he awakes, he writes the letter B on the slate, which Mrs Rouncewell interprets as a summons for Bucket.

Sir Leicester gives the letter to Bucket to read, and then writes, "Full forgiveness. Find--." Bucket agrees, and Sir Leicester has him open a box and take out money for expenses. Before he leaves, Bucket tells Mrs Rouncewell that George has been freed, and urges her to turn her attention to Sir Leicester. He then goes to Lady Dedlock's room to search for clues, and finds Esther's handkerchief in the inner drawer of a little chest. He then goes to George's Shooting Gallery, where George gives him Esther's address in town. He is admitted there by Jarndyce, and tells him that Sir Leicester has suffered "apoplexy or paralysis" and that Lady Dedlock has disappeared: "It looks like suicide." He asks for Esther's help in following Lady Dedlock, thinking that "if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for," it will be easier to find her.

As he waits for Esther to join him in the search, Bucket tries to imagine where she might go.

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.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), The Lonely Figure (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Richard Cant as Mercury, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Burn Gorman as Guppy.

22. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 791-816

Chapter 52: Obstinacy through Chapter 53: The Track

Woodcourt brings the news to Esther and Jarndyce that Tulkinghorn has been murdered. Esther immediately recalls Lady Dedlock's fear of him, but the real shock is George's arrest for the murder. Jarndyce is unable to believe him guilty, but Woodcourt carefully lays out the evidence: George is known to have expressed "animosity" toward Tulkinghorn, and to have done so in violent terms, and has admitted that he was at the scene of the crime at about the time it was committed. Jarndyce insists that murder is not what he expects of a man who gave shelter to both Gridley and Jo. They all agree to go visit George in the jail.

George is resigned to his fate: "a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as I have, gets on well enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes." He insists that his defense is that he's telling the truth, and adamantly refuses to hire a lawyer: "I don't take kindly to the breed."

"Say, I am innocent, and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether of not? Act as if I was; -- shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way -- if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?"

The group is joined by the Bagnets, who are introduced to them, and Mrs Bagnet speaks for her husband in scolding George for his passivity with regard to fighting his case: "I never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly, as I have been to hear you talk this day to the present company." George clings stubbornly to his permission, however, and Mrs Bagnet signals to Esther that she would like to talk with them outside. As Esther leaves, George tells Jarndyce that on "the dead man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark, that I had half a mind to speak to it." Hearing this, Esther feels "such a shudder as I never felt before or since, and hope I shall never feel again." The figure, George goes on, "crossed the moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to it."

Outside, Mrs Bagnet tells them that George is so stubborn that none of them will be able to persuade him to fight for his release, but that George has relatives that he hasn't mentioned: "They don't know of him, but he does know of them." His mother, she says, is "alive, and must be brought here straight!" She intends to go to Lincolnshire and bring her back, and she sets off on this mission.

Meanwhile, Bucket is still on the case, and he is there for Tulkinghorn's funeral, riding in one of the carriages that follow the procession. Afterward, he goes to the Dedlocks', where the footman tells him another letter has arrived for him: "he has received a round half dozen, within the last twenty-four hours," all containing the same two words: "LADY DEDLOCK." Surreptitiously he takes a look at the letters to Sir Leicester on the library table, but none of them has a handwriting that matches the one on the envelope sent to him.

Bucket puts on his best ingratiating manner, even flirting with Volumnia Dedlock, and persistently referring to the master of the house by full title: "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet." Sir Leicester remains outraged by Tulkinghorn's murder, and proclaims of the murderer -- whom everyone present assumes to have been George -- "If it were my brother who had committed it, I would not spare him." At this, Bucket "looks very grave." He addresses the gathering:

"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this lady," -- meaning Volumnia -- "with our leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case -- a beautiful case -- and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to supply in a few hours." 

Sir Leicester is glad to hear it, but Bucket continues, "Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families." Sir Leicester dismisses him, "with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they must take the consequences." Bucket takes his leave but returns quickly to ask "who posted the Reward-bill on the staircase." Sir Leicester says he ordered it done, and when Bucket asks why, says that "it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment."

In the hall, Bucket encounters the footman, and begins to flatter him by commenting on his height and suggesting that he should pose for "a friend of mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy Sculptor." He begins to talk about Lady Dedlock, who is out to dinner, and has the footman confirm that she goes out frequently -- which, Bucket says, doesn't surprise him as she is "so handsome and so graceful and so elegant" that she "is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes." But he changes the subject to ask the footman whether his father was in service, too. Bucket says that his was, and "Said with his last breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career." His brother, Bucket says, is in service, and so is his brother-in-law. And then he switches back to the topic of Lady Dedlock, asking, "a little spoilt? A little capricious?"

Just then, as Bucket has gained the confidence of the footman, the lady herself enters, and the footman attending her identifies him to her. She asks if he is waiting to see Sir Leicester, and he says he has seen him already, and that he has nothing "at present" to ask her. He watches her ascend the stairs.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Shadow (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

Bucket observes to the footman that Lady Dedlock "Doesn't look quite healthy," and the footman agrees: She suffers from headaches, he says. And she walks sometimes for two hours, even at night. Bucket slyly changes the subject again to the footman's height, and then back to Lady Dedlock's walks at night. Then Bucket observes, "she went out walking, the very night of this business." The footman takes the bait: "To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way." Bucket says, of course he did: "I saw you doing it." He claims that he was in a hurry, going to see an aunt of his in Chelsea, and "chanced to be passing at the time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten." The footman falls for it: "Half-past nine." That's right, Bucket says, "And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?" So she was, says the footman.

And Bucket takes his leave of the footman, urging him, when he has time to spare, to think of getting in touch with "that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties."

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Hugo Speer as Mr George, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Anne Reid as Mrs Rouncewell, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock.

21. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 752-791

Chapter 49: Dutiful Friendship through Chapter 51: Enlightened

It's Mrs Bagnet's birthday, and we're going to spend a lot of time on that fact until Mr George arrives for the celebration. As the Bagnets go through their business, which is not particularly relevant to any of the major story-lines of the novel, Mr Bagnet does mention that George is "extra-drilled.... By a lawyer. Who would put the devil out." Since we know that lawyer is dead, we have all the more reason to await George's arrival. And when it comes, the Bagnets notice that he is "white" and "shocked." But he tries to brave it out, giving Mrs Bagnet a brooch for her present.

There is some talk of Jo's death, and then a surprise arrives in the form of Mr Bucket, who claims that he saw the musical instruments in the Bagnets' shop-window and is in the market for a second-hand cello -- or "wiolinceller." George introduces him to the Bagnets, who welcome him into their party, and Bagnet manages to ingratiate himself by making much of the Bagnet children.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Friendly Behaviour of Mr Bucket (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But when Mrs Bucket tells him that "George has not been in his usual spirits" that evening, Bucket asks, "What should you be out of spirits for? You haven't got anything on your mind, you know." And after some chat about the children and how he and Mrs Bucket don't have any, Bucket repeats himself: "And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George; what could you have on your mind!"

Finally, it is time to go, and Bucket leaves with George. He conducts him into a room in a public house, closes the door behind himself, and says, "You must consider yourself in custody, George." He informs George that he is a suspect in the murder of Tulkinghorn. George expresses surprise: "Bucket! It's not possible that Mr Tulkinghorn has been killed, and that you suspect me?" But when Bucket tells him the murder took place at Tulkinghorn's office at ten o'clock the night before, George admits, "Why great Heaven, I was there, last night!"

Bucket says yes, he knows, and that George has "been seen hanging about the place" and that Tulkinghorn "may have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow." Sir Leicester Dedlock, he tells George, has offered a reward of a hundred guineas for the apprehension of the murderer. Bucket produces handcuffs and tells George he has to use them. "The trooper flushes angrily, and hesitates a moment; but holds out his two hands, clasped together, and says, 'There! Put them on!'" And, letting George pull down his hat so he doesn't have to meet the eyes of anyone, Bucket conducts him to jail.

And now back to Esther, and in fact back in time several weeks. Caddy Jellyby has been in poor health since giving birth to a baby, "a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little, lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin." Though it is her godchild and is named for her, Esther regards it as "quite a piteous little sight." Caddy and Prince have begged Esther to come help nurse Caddy back to health, and after she makes some exhausting day-trips into London, Jarndyce suggests that they move into their lodgings in the city for the duration. He also suggests that they persuade Woodcourt to look in on Caddy, which occasions some embarrassment on Esther's part. She recalls how much Ada and Caddy made of the flowers that Woodcourt sent her, and which she has now burned. 

Since Esther has still not told Ada of her engagement to Jarndyce -- or as she still puts it, "that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House" -- she now feels more pressure than ever to do so. Ada is celebrating her twenty-first birthday, and Esther goes to her room at the stroke of midnight to be the first to wish her happy birthday. She also takes the opportunity to share the news with Ada, who is happy to hear it. Esther is "so comforted by the sense of having one right, in casting this last idle reservation away, that I was ten times happier than I was before. I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago; but now that it was gone, I felt as if I understood its nature better." The "as if" in that sentence is a very large one.

Once they get to London, Esther spends most of her time with Caddy, so she sees less of Ada. Mrs Jellyby visits her daughter and granddaughter "occasionally, with her usual distraught manner," taking little notice of the baby, "as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan on its native shores." Mr Turveydrop is as demanding as ever: "If the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him uncomfortable." But he has taken a fancy to Peepy "and would take the child out walking with great pomp," though Peepy has to be expensively dressed, with the cost borne by Caddy and Prince. And because Woodcourt is often there to tend to Caddy, Esther inevitably sees a great deal of him.

But it seems to her that "Ada was not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be," and "it came into my head that she was a little grieved -- for me -- by what I had told her about Bleak House." Notice that it's always Bleak House that Esther speaks of -- not Jarndyce, and never about being married to him. And how much of her sense that Ada was "grieved -- for me" is Esther's projection of her own feelings?

Finally, Jarndyce asks if "Woodcourt has restored Caddy Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?" Esther is pleased to be able to say yes, "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers, is to be made rich, guardian." That she still calls her husband-to-be "guardian," may be one reason that Jarndyce says, "We would make him as rich as a Jew, if we knew how. Would we not, little woman?" The phrase he uses, with its strong whiff for us of antisemitism, was commonplace well into the twentieth century. It doesn't bother Esther, however, who laughs and says that "it might spoil him" to be rich. And Jarndyce continues this dance on a precipice by commenting, "Rich enough to have his own happy home, and his own household gods -- and household goddess too, perhaps?" He continues to say, "I have been sounding him delicately about his plans" and to observe that "he seems half inclined for another voyage."

Esther, who is holding so tightly on to her emotions that she doesn't betray them even to us, says, "It might open a new world to him."

"So it might," my guardian assented. "I doubt if he expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he sometimes feels some particular disappointment, or misfortune, encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?"

Esther shakes her head, and Jarndyce continues by saying, "I should say it was likely at present that he will give a long trail to another country." She responds with something politely noncommittal.

This whole scene is fraught with tensions that Dickens unfortunately doesn't know how to express or exploit. Jane Austen or George Eliot or Henry James could have handled it skillfully. But in part because he has trapped himself into Esther's point of view, Dickens can't bring out the ironies in this dialogue as effectively as he might. It ends with Ada, who is listening in, in tears, which when Esther notices, she comments, "I felt that I had only to be placid and merry, once for all to undeceive my dear, and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but be myself." But does Esther really know herself?

Esther takes Ada upstairs, where Ada says, "if I could only make up my mind to speak to you and my cousin John, when you are together!" Esther doesn't pry into the source of this outburst, even when Ada continues, "O when I think of all these years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do?" Esther has noticed that Ada has been working on something that she puts away when Esther enters, and that the drawer in which she puts it is partly open, but she doesn't take the opportunity to find out what it is. And when she checks to see if Ada is asleep, she notices "that she lay with one hand under her pillow so that it was hidden."

When Woodcourt arrived in London, he sought out Richard, and found him lodging on the second floor of Symonds Inn, in which Vholes has his office. Vholes is full of warnings about Richard's finances, and the necessity of taking what he's owed out of the estate, if it's ever settled. Esther tells us that Woodcourt found Richard "in a dull room, fadedly furnished, "and he told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face, and the dejection of his manner." He is sunk in self pity, telling Woodcourt, "you can pursue your art for its own sake; and can put your hand upon the plough, and never turn; and can strike a purpose out of anything. You, and I, are very different." He tells Woodcourt that his concern is for Ada as much as for himself.

When Woodcourt tells this to Esther, "It revived a fear I had had before, that my dear girl's property would be absorbed by Mr Vholes, and that Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this." Now that Caddy has recovered, she proposes to Ada that they visit Richard and is surprised when she hesitates. But once they set out, on "a sombre day" on which "I thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements, than I had ever seen before," Esther is surprised that Ada knows exactly where Richard is lodging. His name is "in great white letters on a hearse-like panel" in the door.

Ada opens the door without knocking, and they find Richard surrounded by "dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked, I saw the ominous words that ran in it, repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce." His obsession is visible, and he is open about expressing it: "Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, the suit, my dear girl!"

His hopefulness had long beenmore painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable, that it had long touched me to the heart.

And now Ada reveals her secret: She and Richard have been married for more than two months. She will not be going home with Esther, but will stay with Richard. "And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me."

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Light (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

They married because Richard would not accept her money, and Richard claims that they didn't tell Esther because she was so busy nursing Caddy at the time. So Esther gives them her blessing, and puts on a façade of cheerfulness. But when she goes downstairs she bursts into tears and "walked up and down in a dim corner, sobbing and crying." When she reaches home, Jarndyce is out: "The poor boy whom I had found at St Albans had reappeared a short time before, and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to inquire about him, and did not return to dinner." So Esther goes out, taking Charley with her, just to look at the lights in the window of the room where Ada and Richard are living. She even goes up to the second floor and kisses "the hearse-like panel of the door, as a kiss for my dear, and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit."

When she gets home, Jarndyce is there. He has already guessed, from her tears and Ada's empty chair, that she and Richard are married. "Bleak House is thinning fast," he says, twice. Which causes her to renew her vow to remain there with him. But she thinks, "I feared I might not quite have been all I had meant to be, since the letter and the answer."

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket, Timothy West as Sir Leicester Dedlock, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Bryan Dick as Prince Turveydrop, Matthew Kelly as Mr Turveydrop, Nathalie Press as Caddy Jellyby, Brian Pettifer as Mr Growler, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Dermot Crowley as Mr Vholes, Patrick Kennedy as Richard Carstone, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Lilo Baur as Hortense.

20. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, pp. 719-752

Chapter 47: Jo's Will through Chapter 48: Closing In

Woodcourt and Jo make their way through London, Jo sticking to the shadows while Woodcourt walks in the open. Woodcourt "revolves in his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. 'It surely is a strange fact,' he considers, 'that in the heart of a civilised world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unowned dog.'" The observation takes us back more than four hundred pages, to the passage in which Jo and a dog listen to music, and Dickens observes, "how far above the human listener is the brute!"

Jo is so ill that he can't even eat, and Woodcourt takes his pulse and listens to his chest, then, unable to find an apothecary, gives Jo some wine, which restores him enough that he can eat the bread he has been given. They talk, and Woodcourt hears of "the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its consequences." He decides to take Jo to Miss Flite, but when he reaches the old rag-and-bottle shop, he finds that she has moved. Judy Smallweed is there, and tells Woodcourt "that Miss Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs Blinder, in Bell Yard" -- the former home of Gridley and the Neckett children.

Miss Flite is of course delighted to see the heroic Woodcourt, and suggests that they take Jo to Mr George, who will know what to do with him. George welcomes them. Woodcourt explains, "I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many hours, if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a workhouse ... which is a system that I don't take kindly to." He tells George that Jo has a terror of a "person who ordered him to keep out of the way," and reveals that the man is Bucket, whom George of course knows, and describes as "a -- rum customer."

When Woodcourt mentions that he wants to tell Esther about Jo's plight, George immediately agrees to take Jo in himself: "I can assure you that I would willingly be knocked on the head at any time, if it would be at all agreeable to Miss Summerson; and consequently I esteem it a privilege to do that young lady any service, however small." Woodcourt assures him that Jo is not contagious, but he also adds, quietly, "the boy is deplorably low and reduced; and that he may be -- I do not say that he is -- too far gone to recover."

As George and Phil Squod take Jo in, Dickens comments,

He is not one of Mrs Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-born savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sorees are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish.

George, telling Jo that Phil Squod "was found, when a baby, in the gutter," sends the two of them off to get the boy a bath and some clean clothes. And then he talks to Woodcourt, revealing that the story about the lady in the veil took place in Tulkinghorn's offices. Woodcourt asks what sort of man Tulkinghorn is, and George replies, "a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood, than a rusty old carbine is."

When Jo and Phil return, Woodcourt goes to see Jarndyce, with whom he returns. Jo's condition is worsening, and as Jo keeps mentioning Mr Snagsby, who has been his benefactor, Woodcourt goes to his place of business. When Woodcourt mentions Jo, Snagsby gives a groan: "You couldn't name an individual human being -- except myself -- that my little woman is more set and determined against than Jo." But he can't explain why, when Woodcourt asks. Nevertheless, "being tender-hearted, and affected by the account he hears of Jo's condition, he readily engages to 'look round,' as early in the evening as he can manage it quietly."

Jo tells Snagsby that Esther has been to see him and that she doesn't blame him for making him sick. And then he asks Snagsby to write something for him:

"Wot I was a thinkin on then, Mr Sangsby, wos, that wen I was moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps, as to write out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to do it; and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd was Mr Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to forgiv me in his mind. If the writin could be made to say it wery large, he might."

Tearfully, Snagsby promises to do so, and, having already left three half-crowns for Jo, leaves another one.

At the end, Woodcourt asks Jo if he knows any prayers, and Jo says, as always, "Never know'd nothink, sir.... Mr Chadbands he wos a prayin wunst at Mr Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a speakin' to his-self, and not to me." And the people who used to come to Tom-all-Alone's to pray for the people there "all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a talking to theirsselves, or a passing blame on the t'others, and not a talkin to us." He says he would like to be buried next to "him as wos wery good to me," meaning Nemo. As Woodcourt says the Lord's Prayer, he dies, and Dickens makes his pronouncement:

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day. 

Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is the brilliant center of every social event, for "it is not in her nature, when envious eyes are looking on, to yield or to droop." But she is planning an act of defiance. She calls Rosa to her one morning, and prepares her for dismissal: "There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day." Rosa is distraught, and Lady Dedlock assures her that it gives her great pain as well.

When Mr Rouncewell is announced, she goes to the library, where she finds Sir Leicester in conference with Tulkinghorn. She tells her husband that Rouncewell is there because she has decided "that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am tired to death of the matter." So Sir Leicester tells the footman to show "the iron gentleman" -- his term for Rouncewell the factory owner -- in. Under Lady Dedlock's questioning, Rouncewell tells her that his son is still in love with Rosa. She says, "if you cannot give us the assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion that the girl had better leave me."

Sir Leicester protests that Rosa has had the "good fortune ... to have attracted the notice and favour of an eminent lady," and wonders whether she should be deprived of this advantage, and as he sees it, be punished just because she "has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son." Rouncewell, however, reminds him that it was his idea in the first place that she should be taken from service and educated to a higher station. Sir Leicester is, of course, affronted by what he sees as a challenge to the social order, that service to the Dedlocks should be ranked lower than marriage to the son of a man who has made his fortune in manufacturing.

Lady Dedlock intervenes: "The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever to say against her; but she is so far insensible to her many advantages and her good fortune, that she is in love -- or supposes she is, poor little fool -- and unable to appreciate them." Her calculated pose of indifference changes Sir Leicester's mind, so he decides that Rosa "had better go." She maintains this façade of coldness even when Rosa enters, still evidently in distress.

At this point, Tulkinghorn speaks up, "She seems after all ... as if she were crying at going away." Rouncewell says that is because "she is not well-bred," and accompanies her out, as Rosa "thanks my Lady over and over again." Lady Dedlock doesn't betray her true feelings even then. She "waves her off with indifference." Tulkinghorn knows she is acting, however. When Sir Leicester goes out, and Lady Dedlock is left to dine alone, he asks to see her. The dismissal of Rosa, he says, "is a violation of our agreement."

She replies that she has done what she can "to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame." And when he tells her that, since she has broken their agreement and that he now feels justified in taking his own course in the matter, she says, "I am quite prepared."

She asks if Tulkinghorn plans to reveal her secret to Sir Leicester that night, and he says no, but he can't promise that he won't do so tomorrow: "I would rather say no more." He takes his leave and heads for his home, as Dickens observes that there is nothing that tells Tulkinghorn, "Don't go home!"

As for Lady Dedlock, she asks a servant to open the garden gate and to give her the key. "She will walk there some time, to ease her aching head," she tells him. "She may be an hour; she may be more."

Tulkinghorn  reaches home and goes to his wine cellar, having to "cross a little prison-like yard." He "looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too."

After a little while the quiet is disturbed. "What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?"

In Tulkinghorn's office, the allegorical Roman painted on the ceiling is still pointing.

Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), A New Meaning in the Roman (Source: David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page)

But, a little after the coming of the day, come people to clean the rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild; for, looking up at his outstretched hand, and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.... It happens surely, that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at these things, looks up at the roman, and that he is invested in all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.

Tulkinghorn has been shot through the heart.

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The 2005 BBC/Masterpiece Theatre dramatization features Charles Dance as Tulkinghorn, Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, Richard Harrington as Allan Woodcourt, Harry Eden as Jo, Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson, Carey Mulligan as Ada Clare, Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce, Hugo Speer as Mr George, Michael Smiley as Phil Squod, Sean McGinley as Snagsby, Pauline Collins as Miss Flite, Lilo Baur as Hortense, Tom Georgeson as Clamb, Phil Davis as Smallweed, Loo Brealey as Judy Smallweed, Alun Armstrong as Mr Bucket.