Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning smile.
"Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you.
I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter.
I was in the service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her ladyship, that the child was dead--she WAS very nearly so--when she was born.
But she's alive, and I know her."
With these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," Mrs. Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.
"I suppose now," returns that officer, "YOU will he expecting a twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?"
Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can "offer" twenty pence.
"My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says Mr. Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger.
"What may YOUR game be, ma'am?"
Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes.
Everybody it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence--no doubt--of Mr. Snagsby's suborning and tampering.
There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes.
There was Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, deceased; and they were "all in it."
In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby's son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed Mr. Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not his son why did he go?
The one occupation of her life has been, for some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, and to piece suspicious circumstances together--and every circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day.
Thus did it come to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr. Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually, by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial separation.
All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
While this exordium is in hand--and it takes some time--Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed.
Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind.
"Very good," says Mr. Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know, and being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention.
Now I won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant.
But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.
It was so opposed to your interests.
That's what I look at."
"We wanted to get in," pleads Mr. Smallweed.
"Why, of course you wanted to get in," Mr. Bucket asserts with cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life--what I call truly venerable, mind you!--with his wits sharpened, as I have no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious!
You see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground," says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.
"I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr. Smallweed.
"That's it!
That's where your temper got the better of you.
Now, you keep it under another time and you'll make money by it.
Shall I ring for them to carry you down?"
"When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.
"Bless your heart for a true woman!
Always curious, your delightful sex is!" replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry.
"I shall have the pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day--not forgetting Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty."
"Five hundred!" exclaims Mr. Smallweed.
"All right!
Nominally five hundred."
Mr. Bucket has his hand on the bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating tone.
Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up.
Mr. Bucket follows them to the door, and returning, says with an air of serious business,
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not to buy this up.
I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap.
You see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it.
Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways.
So it is, and such is life.
The cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs.