Page:Bleak House.djvu/685

“Angel and devil by turns, eh?” cries Mr. Bucket. “But I am in my regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy. I’ve been lady’s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to the bonnet? There’s a cab at the door.”

Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes herself perfectly neat in one shake, and looks, to do her justice, uncommonly genteel.

“Listen then, my angel,” says she, after several sarcastic nods. “You are very spiritual. But can you res-tore him back to life?”

Mr. Bucket answers “Not exactly.”

“That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you make a honorable lady of Her?”

“Don’t be so malicious,” says Mr. Bucket.

“Or a haughty gentleman of Him?” cries Mademoiselle, referring to Sir Leicester with ineffable disdain. “Eh! O then regard him! The poor infant! Ha! ha! ha!”

“Come, come, why this is worse Parlaying than the other,” says Mr. Bucket. “Come along!”

“You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me. It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu you old man, grey. I pity you, and I des-pise you!”

With these last words, she snaps her teeth together, as if her mouth closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner peculiar to himself; enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter, and she the object of his affections.

Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude as though he were still listening, and his attention were still occupied. At length he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, supporting himself by the table. Then he stops; and, with more of those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at something.

Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heir-looms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet, and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair, and his extended arms.

It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired, honored, and set up for the world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her, almost to the exclusion of himself; and cannot bear to look upon her cast down from the high place she has graced so well.

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.