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Bleak House: Snagsby

With Mr. Tulkinghorn to wonder at anything was to investigate it. Why had my lady asked about that handwriting? Why had she fainted? Perhaps Snagsby, the law stationer, who had had these papers copies, could enlighten him. Yes, Snagsby knew. It was the work of a gloomy, poverty-stricken recluse calling himself Nemo and loading over one villainous Krooks's rag-and-bottle shop. Thither they go and up into the squalid chamber. Nemo is lying on his wretched bed, his eyes staring, his body motionless. "God save us, he is dead!" exclaimed Mr. Tulkinghorn.

I heard of the inquest through Mr. Guppy, a shrewd young law clerk who made hopeless calf love to me. The only witness who seemed to have known the dead man was Jo, a forlorn boy crossing-sweeper, and he knew little except "'E wos good to me, 'e wos." But Mr. Tulkinghorn docketed Jo for further use. Meantime, "I have seen the man whose handwriting attracted your attention," he wrote Lady Dedlock. And soon after, on a visit to Chesney Wold. "I found him--dead," he tells my lady face to face. And whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden for a time in their own hearts. The faithful Mr. Guppy, whom I could never encourage because--well, because there was Dr. Allan Woodcourt, for one thing--gave me the news of Jo's arrest for loitering, and of the strange story he told in explanation of money found on him. they took him to Sangsby's. and this was Jo's tale: "They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby, out of a sov'ring as wos give me by a lady in a wale as said she was a servant, and as come to my crossin' on night and asked to be showed this 'ere'ouse and the 'ouse wot him as you give the writin' to died at, and the berrin'-ground wot he's berried in. And I don it." And now why did Snagsby hurry off to grim old Tulkinghorn with this odd tale: And why did Mr. Tulkinghorn at once call in Bucket, a great London detective, to go and fetch Jo? And was there any dark import to the bit of melodrama in the lawyer's office where the waif was shown a veiled woman dressed as a servant? "It's'er, an' it ain't'er," he had said, gazing raptly at the figure. "I know the wale an' the bunnit an' the gownd; but it ain't 'er 'and, nor yet 'erf rings, nor yet 'er woice. It's 'er, an'it ain't 'er." Meantime I had had my first glimpse of the celebrated Lady Dedlock. My guardian had taken us all down to Lincolnshire to visit a friend, and it was in the little parish church I saw her. Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart occasioned by the lock I met as I stood up? Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome, proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and to hold mine? And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, associated with the lonely days at my godmother's. I was soon to know that this meant, and, curiously enough, through Mr. Guppy. My impossible suitor, it seemed, had noted a resemblance between myself and Lady Dedlock. He had learned by chance that my name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon. Hoping to help me, straight to Lady Dedlock he went with his news. She received him haughtily, but when he informed her that he had found that his cherished Esther was Esthger Hawdon, "My God!" had burst through her icy reserve.

Life went on for a while with charming grace and pleasantness at Bleak House. Then the darkness of a terrible disease encompassed me, and when I had recovered my face was so sadly changed that I hardly knew myself. To recuperate, my guardian took me down to Lincolnshire, near Chesney Wold. And there I met Lady Dedlock again.

I was resting on a bench in the beautiful wood near the great mansion one day when she came and sat down on the seat beside me. Suddenly she caught me to her breast, kissed me, fell down on her knees, and cried to me: "Oh, my child, my child, I am your unhappy and wicked mother! Oh, try to forgive me! I had thought you dead in infancy. My cruel sister told me so." Then I felt a burst of gratitude, through all my tumult of emotion, that I was so changed that I could never disgrace her by any trace of likeness.

But at once I knew that our secret was not safe. My mother told me of the cold and crafty Tulkinghorn, already suspicious of her and ready to charge her with the truth. "Could you not trust him?" I had asked. "I shall never try," she replied. "The dark road I have trodden for so many years will end where it will. I follow it along to the end, wherever the end be."

Soon I knew that the merciless Tulkinghorn was hot on the scent, Journeying down to Chesney Wold, he told my mother that he knew everything and would hold her in his ghastly grip, awaiting his own time for revealing the story to Sir Leicester. Nor did the pitiless solicitor give her much time of grace. When the Dedlocks returned to their stately London house he sought my lady and declared to her that soon, perhaps on the morrow, his duty demanded that he inform Sir Leicester of his wife's former disgrace. "I am quite prepared," she said, icily, as he started for home. But, with an inward fire consuming her, she would walk in the garden for an hour or more, she told a flunkey. No, she would need no further escort. The next morning London rang with the news that the great lawyer, Mr. Tulinghorn, the trusted solicitor of nobility, the impregnable guardian of family confidences, had been found by terrified servants in his bedchamber in Lincoln's Inn Fields, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.