From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he had never been out of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He neither changes his dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he melts into his own square.
Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old.
The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr. Tulkinghorn’s side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.
“Is that Snagsby?”
“Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir, and going home.”
“Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?”
“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his head in his deference towards his best customer, “I was wishful to say a word to you, sir.”
“Can you say it here?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Say it then.” The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the court-yard.
“It is relating,” says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, “it is relating — not to put too fine a point upon it — to the foreigner, sir!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. “What foreigner?”
“The foreign female, sir. French, if I don’t mistake? I am not acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night.”
“Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense.”
“Indeed, sir?” Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his hat. “I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that.” Mr. Snagsby appears to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.
“And what can you have to say, Snagsby,” demands Mr. Tulkinghorn, “about her?”
“Well, sir,” returns the stationer, shading his communication with his hat, “it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is very great — at least, it’s as great as can be expected, I’m sure — but my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and hovering — I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if I could avoid it, but hovering, sir — in the court — you know it is — now ain’t it? I only put it to yourself, sir.
Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
“Why, what do you mean?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
“Just so, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby; “I was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female — which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure — caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and she, taking fright at the foreigner’s looks — which are fierce — and at a grinding manner that she has of speaking — which is calculated to alarm a weak mind — gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it, and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When she DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir” — Mr. Snagsby repeats the word with pathetic emphasis — “in the court. The effects of which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn’t wonder if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even in the neighbours’ minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows,” says Mr. Snagsby, shaking his head, “I never had an idea of a foreign female, except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby, or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I do assure you, sir!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires when the stationer has finished, “And that’s all, is it, Snagsby?”
“Why yes, sir, that’s all,” says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough that plainly adds, “and it’s enough too — for me.”
“I don’t know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she is mad,” says the lawyer.
“Even if she was, you know, sir,” Mr. Snagsby pleads, “it wouldn’t be a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign dagger planted in the family.”
“No,” says the other. “Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here.”
Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying to himself, “These women were created to give trouble the whole earth over. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here’s the maid now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!”
So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms, lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much of the Allegory over-head there, but that importunate Roman, who is for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr. Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with a candle in his hand when a knock comes.
“Who’s this? Aye, aye, mistress, it’s you, is it? You appear at a good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?”
He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk’s hall and taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly closes the door before replying.
“I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir.”
“HAVE you!”
“I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for you.”
“Quite right, and quite true.”
“Not true. Lies!”
At times there is ............