Lady Dedlock

“ My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers, and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what to make of it—which was probably his general state of mind in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so elegant ; has such a sweet voice, and such a thrilling touch, that Rosa can feel it yet ! ”

“ If you hear of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! ”

“ Rouncewell by name,” said, he, “and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her about her own fair person—an honour which my young friend himself does not at all appreciate. However, he can’t marry just yet, even if his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time to—fish. Ha ha ha ha!”
“Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?” asked Ada. ”

“ But a moment’s observation of her figure as she stands in the window without any support, looking out at the stars —not up—gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens, reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little behind her.
“Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I keep it too.” ”

“ The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking on with her lips very tightly set.
“I am sorry,” said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, “that we are not likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly.”
But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful leave of Ada—none of me—and put her hand upon his proffered arm, and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage with a hood.
“Come in, child,” she said to the pretty girl; “I shall want you. Go on!” ”

“ Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of the fashionable tree. ”

“ Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. ”

“ Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class—as one of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of ordinary mortals—seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks so. ”

“ Lady Dedlock threw herself sobbing at her feet, and put her arms around her and kissed her, as she told her that she was her unhappy mother, who must keep her secret for the sake of her husband, Sir Leicester.
Esther thought her heart must break with both grief and joy at once. But she comforted Lady Dedlock, and told her nothing would ever change her love for her, and they parted with tears and kisses.
Another surprise of a different sort awaited Esther on her return to Bleak House. Mr. Jarndyce told her that he loved her and asked her if [Pg 404] she would marry him. ”

“ A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in his heart, “even of the Chesney Wold station.” Not a little more magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.
“All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in love, say, with a young woman in the factory. ”

“ But she is proud, is she not?”
“If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always reason to be.”
“Well,” says Watt, “it’s to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!”
“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking.”
“Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,” says Watt, “and I humbly ask his pardon. ”

“ If not, Miss Dedlock would be interested—”
“Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket with his head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear like an earring, “we can’t be too private just at present. You will presently see that we can’t be too private. A lady, under the circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock’s elevated station of society, can’t but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can’t be too private.” ”

“ As she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and further from her.
She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
“In short, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent thief, “the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and—” He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence. ”

“ And here, catching my guardian’s eye, he broke into one of his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little market-town.
“Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?” said my guardian as we drove along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.
“Sir Arrogant Numskull is here,” replied Mr. Boythorn. “Ha ha ha! Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels here. My Lady,” in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, “is expected, I believe, daily. ”

“ Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle, doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats, and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the eyes of men. ”

“ Who hath been here, I say?”
“Dost think I would wrong thee, then?” answered the dame. “No! no!—not for my life!”
“Who hath been here?” demanded Shedlock, seizing her by the collar of her bodice.
“Nay, never hurt me, husband!” replied the dame, shrinking a little. [101] “Only say thou wilt forgive me—say thou wilt not be angered, and I will tell thee.”
“Woman! I have a mind to dash thee down,” rejoined Shedlock, giving her a slight shake, “and to trample thee under foot, as the angels of darkness trample on Judas. ”

“ If Dame Shedlock had been a mother, her love for her husband might, from the division of her affections, have been less stable, and more alive to those slights and provocations, which fall on the heart with a depressing influence. ”

“ Once the home was neat and cosy, and dimly an old story,—a story never finished, floated through the girl’s mind.
“Some day, child, when thou art older,” it was the mother who had spoken, “I will tell thee of my home. Perhaps we’ll write a letter, they may like to see thee, little lass. Try to be a lady, dear, then they will not be ashamed of thee.” Things grew confused as Debby tried to think, but there was one night that was ever clear. It was the last night of the clean happy life. “Be a lady, Debby child, and whatever happens stay with father like a good maid. ”

“ When I call upon Lady DeWolfe, I say to myself impressively, as I go up the steps: 'You are as good as a butler, as well born and well bred as a butler, even more intelligent than a butler. Now, simply because he has an unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour, which you can respectfully admire, but can never hope to imitate, do not cower beneath the polar light of his eye; assert yourself; be a woman; be an American citizen!' All in vain. ”

“ I told her, Yes, there was a lady lodged two doors off, that I was very intimate with. “But hast thou no way out backward to go to her?” says she. Now it happened there was a back door in the garden, by which we usually went and came to and from the house, so I told her of it. “Well, well,” says she, “go out and make a visit then, and leave the rest to me.” Away I ran, told the lady (for I was very free there) that I was a widow to-day, my spouse being gone to London, so I came not to visit her but to dwell with her that day, because also our landlady had got strangers come from London. ”

“ She dried a second tear. “If Momma lives till the end of Creation,” she said, “she will never, never get over it. And I don’t wonder!”
“Darling, if it would really do you any good to tell me——” breathed Lady Sidonia.
“I tell all my friends,” said the Duchess with a sigh; “and they’re invariably of one opinion—that Momma was cruelly victimized.”
“She is——”
“Call her forty, dear. It would be just cruel to say anything more. People call me lovely and all those things,” said the Duchess candidly, “and I allow they’re correct. Well, compared with what Momma was at my age, I’m real ordinary.” ”

“ Besides, she told her that her lodger (meaning me) was not a sham lady, but the real wife of a knight baronet, and that she knew her to be honestly such, and far above such a person as she had described. She then added that she had another reason why it was not very possible to be true; “and that is,” says she, “thy age is in the way; for thou acknowledgest that thou art four-and-twenty years old, and that thou wast the youngest of three of thy mother’s children, so that by thy account thy mother must be extremely young, or this lady cannot be thy mother ”

“ Madame at first paid scant attention to the Venutellis. Other guests were arriving, the greater number elderly foreign ladies in dresses of questionable freshness and fashion. Arduina soon got into conversation with an unattractive gentleman whose round eyes and flat nose surmounted an exaggerated jowl. Massimo followed in the wake of Marianna, who came and went, running about, frisking and shrieking. Regina was stranded between a stout lady who made a few observations without looking at her, and the bald old gentleman who said nothing at all. ”

“ This finished the discourse, and my lord withdrew into his study, in a humour that I am unable to describe, and left me, Amy, Thomas, and my daughter Susanna, as I must now call her, in the parlour together. We sat staring at each other some time, till at last Amy said, "I suppose, my lady, you have no farther business with your new daughter; she has told her story, and may now dispose of herself to the best advantage she can." "No," said I, "I have nothing to say to her, only that she shall never be admitted into my presence again." ”

“ He is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to his hand. It is necessary—less to his own dignity now perhaps than for her sake—that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else. ”

“ So looked the young German who had perhaps heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth century, looked Jacob Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no doubt, was Lady Henry's case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence her theory did not commend itself.
But if Delafield had not echoed them, the little Duchess had received Meredith's remarks with enthusiasm.
"Regret! No, indeed! Why should we regret anything, except that Julie has been miserable so long? She has had a bad time. Every day and all day. ”

“ Ah, if he had only threatened Giovanna Era——! He always looks as if he were in a dream, anyhow."
"No one," continued the little preacher, standing erect in the yellow pulpit, "no one has ever been able to say that he failed to get anything he asked in true faith from Our Most Holy Lady. She, the Lily of the Valley, the Mystical Rose of Jericho——"
But the audience was growing weary. The women, seated on the floor like beds of ranunculuses and poppies, were beginning to stir uneasily, and had ceased to listen. ”

“ There was in her gesture an unconscious yearning, a mute and anguished appeal, as though from the oppressions of human character to the broad strength of nature, that was not lost on Delafield. His mind became the centre of a swift and fierce debate. One voice said: "Why are you persecuting her? Respect her weakness and her grief." And another replied: "It is because she is weak that she must yield--must allow herself to be guided and adored." ”