sir leicester dedlock, whom mr. boythorn so loved to torment, was seventy years old. his wife, many years younger than himself, he had married for love. lady dedlock was not noble by birth—no one, indeed, knew who she had been before her marriage—but she was very beautiful. she was as proud and haughty, too, as she was lovely, and was much sought after. but with all her popularity she had few close friends, and no one in whom she confided.
even her housekeeper, mrs. rouncewell, a fine, handsome old woman who had been sir leicester's servant for fifty years, thought her cold and reserved. mrs. rouncewell herself had had a son george, who many years before had gone off to be a soldier and had never come back; and, looking at her mistress's face, she often wondered if the shadow of pain there was the mark of some old grief or loss of which no one knew. however that may have been, the old baronet loved his wife and was very proud of her.
sir leicester's family lawyer was named tulkinghorn. he was a dull, dignified man who always[pg 391] dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he had to. his one passion was the discovery of other people's secrets. he knew more family secrets than any one else in london, and to discover a new one he would have risked all his fortune.
now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the famous jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was sir leicester dedlock, and one day (the chancery court having actually made a little progress) mr. tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers to read to him.
as the lawyer held one in his hand, lady dedlock, seeing the handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. he answered that it was the work of one of his copyists. a moment later, as he went on reading, they found that lady dedlock had fainted away.
her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but mr. tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that lady dedlock had a secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that what this secret was, he, tulkinghorn, would discover.
he easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called himself "nemo," and who lived above krook's rag-and-bottle shop, a neighbor to crazy little miss flite of the chancery court and the many bird-cages.
krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old[pg 392] rascal, whose sole occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which stood always near him. his only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered cat called "lady jane," who, when not lying in wait for miss flite's birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up like a hairy feather. people in the neighborhood called his dirty shop the "court of chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out again.
in return for mr. tulkinghorn's money krook told him all he knew about his lodger. nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged himself daily. so far as was known, he had but one friend—joe, a wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a coin.
thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he learned nothing. for when krook took him to the room nemo occupied, they found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.
curious to see how lady dedlock would receive this news, mr. tulkinghorn called on her and told her of the unknown man's death. she pretended to listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply moved by it, and he became[pg 393] more anxious than ever to find out what connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.
chance favored mr. tulkinghorn's object. one night he saw joe, the ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a french shawl, the gate of the cemetery where nemo had been buried. later, at sir leicester's, he saw lady dedlock's maid, hortense—a black-haired, jealous french woman, with wolf-like ways—wearing the same shawl.
he cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to face with joe. by the boy's actions mr. tulkinghorn decided at once that joe had never seen hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the truth—that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really lady dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid's clothes to mislead any observer.
this was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper purpose, hortense flew into a passion with him. he sneered at her and turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have her put into prison. because of this she began to hate him with a fierceness which he did not guess.[pg 394]
mr. tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. but he now had to find out who nemo really had been.
if he had only known it, krook could have aided him. the old man had found a bundle of old letters in nemo's room after his death, and these were all addressed to "captain hawdon."
krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and he had no idea what the letters contained. but he was quick to think the bundle might be worth some money. so he put it carefully away.
but mr. tulkinghorn found out nothing from krook, for one day a strange thing happened. krook had drunk so much gin in his life that he had become perfectly soaked with alcohol, so that he was just like a big spongeful of it. now, it is a curious fact that when a great mass of inflammable material is heaped together, sometimes it will suddenly burst into flame and burn up all in a minute, without anything or anybody setting fire to it. this is just what happened to krook. as he stood in the middle of the dirty shop, without any warning, all in a twinkling, he blazed up and burned, clothes and all, and in less time than it takes to tell it, there was nothing left but a little pile of ashes, a burnt mark in the floor and a sticky smoke that stuck to the window-panes and hung in the air like soot. and this was all the neighbors found when they came to search for him.[pg 395]
this was the end of krook, and the rag-and-bottle shop was taken possession of by grandfather smallweed, a hideous, crippled money-lender, who had been his brother-in-law, and who at once went to work ransacking all the papers he could find on the premises.
grandfather smallweed was a thin, toothless, wheezy, green-eyed old miser, who was so nearly dead from age and asthma that he had to be wheeled about by his granddaughter judy.
he had a wife who was out of her mind. everything said in her hearing she connected with the idea of money. if one said, for example, "it's twenty minutes past noon," mrs. smallweed would at once begin to gabble: "twenty pence! twenty pounds! twenty thousand millions of bank-notes locked up in a black box!" and she would not stop till her husband threw a cushion at her (which he kept beside him for that very purpose) and knocked her mouth shut.
grandfather smallweed soon discovered the bundle of letters hidden back of the shelf where lady jane, krook's big cat, slept.
the name they bore, "captain hawdon," was familiar enough to the money-lender. long ago, when hawdon was living a dissipated life in london, he had borrowed money from grandfather smallweed, and this money was still unpaid when he had disappeared. it was said that he had fallen overboard from a vessel and had been drowned.[pg 396]
to think now that the captain had been living as a copyist all these years in london, free from arrest for the debt, filled the wizened soul of the old man with rage. he was ready enough to talk when mr. tulkinghorn questioned him, and finally sold him the bundle of letters.
the lawyer saw that they were in lady dedlock's penmanship; it remained to prove that the dead nemo had really been captain hawdon.
mr. tulkinghorn, of course, had many specimens of the copyist's hand, and after much search he found a man who had once been a fellow soldier of the captain's. he was called "mr. george," and kept a shooting-gallery. mr. george had among his papers a letter once written him by captain hawdon, and not knowing the purpose for which it was to be used, loaned it to the lawyer. the handwriting was the same! and thus mr. tulkinghorn knew that the copyist had really been captain hawdon and that the letters in the bundle had once been written to him by the woman who was now the haughty lady dedlock.
it was a strange, sad story that the letters disclosed, as mr. tulkinghorn, gloating over his success, read them, line by line. the man who had fallen so low as to drag out a wretched existence by copying law papers—whom, until she saw the handwriting in the lawyer's hands, she had believed to be dead—was a man lady dedlock had once loved.[pg 397]
many years before, when a young woman, she had run away from home with him. a little child was born to them whom she named esther. when she and hawdon had separated, her sister, to hide from the world the knowledge of the elopement, had told her the baby esther was dead, had taken the child to another part of the country, given her the name of summerson, and, calling herself her godmother instead of her aunt, brought her up in ignorance of the truth. years had gone by and captain hawdon was reported drowned. at length the little esther's mother had met and married sir leicester dedlock, and in his love and protection had thought her dark past buried from view for ever.
all this the pitiless lawyer read in the letters, and knew that lady dedlock's happiness was now in his hands. and as he thought how, with this knowledge, he could torture her with the fear of discovery, his face took on the look of a cat's when it plays with a mouse it has caught.
meanwhile lady dedlock had suffered much. the knowledge that hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. and the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. she felt mr. tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what he might know.
in the midst of these fears, she accidentally discovered[pg 398] one day that the baby name of esther summerson of bleak house had been, not summerson, but hawdon.
this made lady dedlock guess the whole truth—that esther was in reality her own daughter. as soon as she was alone, she threw herself on her knees in the empty room with sobs, crying:
"oh, my child! my child! not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! oh, my child! my child!"
