My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonishedfashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-dayshe is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligencecan with confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry hassome trouble to keep pace with her. It would have more but thathis other faithful ally, for better and for worse--the gout--dartsinto the old oak bedchamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by bothlegs.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still ademon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct maleline, through a course of time during and beyond which the memoryof man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can beproved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatismor may have taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sickvulgar, but the Dedlock family have communicated somethingexclusive even to the levelling process of dying by dying of theirown family gout. It has come down through the illustrious linelike the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. Itis among their dignities. Sir Leicester is perhaps not whollywithout an impression, though he has never resolved it into words,that the angel of death in the discharge of his necessary dutiesmay observe to the shades of the aristocracy, "My lords andgentlemen, I have the honour to present to you another Dedlockcertified to have arrived per the family gout."Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the familydisorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure.
He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back andspasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a libertytaken somewhere, but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; itbelongs to us; it has for some hundreds of years been understoodthat we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on moreignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.
And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold inthe midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture ofmy Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the longperspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating withsoft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for agesin the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but wasstill a chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield androde a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness.
Inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "Eachof us was a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow ofhimself and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voicesof the rooks now lulling you to rest," and hear their testimony tohis greatness too. And he is very great this day. And woe toBoythorn or other daring wight who shall presumptuously contest aninch with him!
My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by herportrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention ofremaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusionof the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not preparedfor her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury inpowder gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned lastnight to another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed togood society, that if that sort of thing was to last--which itcouldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man ofhis figure couldn't be expected to bear it--there would be noresource for him, upon his honour, but to cut his throat!
What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, thehouse in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo theoutlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon himwhen he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there havebeen between many people in the innumerable histories of this worldwho from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, beenvery curiously brought together!
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, ifany link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked aquestion by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows thatit's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, andharder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him even thatmuch; he found it out.
Jo lives--that is to say, Jo has not yet died--in a ruinous placeknown to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is ablack, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where thecrazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced,by some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possessiontook to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumblingtenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruinedhuman wretch vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters havebred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps inwalls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers,where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carryingfever and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle,and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the finegentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in fivehundred years--though born expressly to do it.
Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like thespringing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a house hasfallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapersand have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gapsremain, and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. Asseveral more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-Alone's may be expected to be a good one.
This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be aninsult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell himso. Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the originalplaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tomlived here when the suit had laid the street waste, all alone,until other settlers came to join him, or whether the traditionaltitle is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honestcompany and put out of the pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows.
Certainly Jo don't know.
"For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through thestreets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as tothe meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over theshops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in thewindows! To see people read, and to see people write, and to seethe postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of allthat language--to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb!
It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to thechurches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think(for perhaps Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, andif it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothingto me? To be hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really tofeel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have nobusiness here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed bythe consideration that I AM here somehow, too, and everybodyoverlooked me until I became the creature that I am! It must be astrange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human (asin the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it ofmy own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattlego by me and to know that in ignorance I belong to them and not tothe superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo'sideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a bishop, or a govemment,or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only knew it) theConstitution, should be strange! His whole material and immateriallife is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the tardy morning which isalways late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit ofbread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, andthe houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on thedoor-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel inForeign Parts and gives it a brush when he has finished as anacknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of theedifice and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poorwretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacificor what it costs to look up the precious souls among the coco-nutsand bread-fruit.
He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. Thetown awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin andwhirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has beensuspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other loweranimals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It ismarket-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, neverguided, run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt theinnocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and hisorder; very, very like!
A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog--a drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop,and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mindfor some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexedrespecting three or four, can't remember where he left them, looksup and down the street as half expecting to see them astray,suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. Athoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep, ready at a whistle to scamper ov............