MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="----=_NextPart_01D089CF.09B07820" This document is a Single File Web Page, also known as a Web Archive file. If you are seeing this message, your browser or editor doesn't support Web Archive files. Please download a browser that supports Web Archive, such as Windows® Internet Explorer®. ------=_NextPart_01D089CF.09B07820 Content-Location: file:///C:/0EB962C5/BleakHouse.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Bleak House
By
Charles Dickens
Chapter IV - Telescopic Philanthro=
py
Chapter V - A Morning Adventure
Chapter VII - The Ghost's Walk
Chapter VIII - Covering a Multitud=
e of
Sins
Chapter XIII - Esther's Narrative<=
/span>
Chapter XVII - Esther's Narrative<=
/span>
Chapter XXI - The Smallweed Family=
Chapter XXIII - Esther's Narrative=
Chapter XXV - Mrs Snagsby Sees It =
All
Chapter XXVII - More Old Soldiers =
Than One
Chapter XXVIII - The Ironmaster
Chapter XXX - Esther's Narrative=
span>
Chapter XXXI - Nurse and Patient=
span>
Chapter XXXII - The Appointed Time=
Chapter XXXIV - A Turn of the Scre=
w
CHAPTER XXXV - Esther's Narrative<=
/span>
Chapter XXXVII - Jarndyce and Jarn=
dyce
Chapter XXXIX - Attorney and Clien=
t
Chapter XL - National and Domestic=
Chapter XLI - In Mr Tulkinghorn's =
Room
CHAPTER XLII - In Mr Tulkinghorn's
Chambers
CHAPTER XLIII - Esther's Narrative=
CHAPTER XLIV - The Letter and the =
Answer
CHAPTER XLIX - Dutiful Friendship<=
/span>
CHAPTER L - Esther's Narrative
CHAPTER LIV - Springing a Mine
CHAPTER LVII - Esther's Narrative<=
/span>
CHAPTER LVIII - A Wintry Day and N=
ight
CHAPTER LIX - Esther's Narrative=
span>
CHAPTER
LXII - Another Discovery
CHAPTER LXIII - Steel and Iron
CHAPTER LXIV - Esther's Narrative<=
/span>
CHAPTER LXV - Beginning the World<=
/span>
CHAPTER LXVI - Down in Lincolnshir=
e
CHAPTER LXVII - The Close of Esthe=
r's
Narrative
A Chancery judge once had the kindness to info=
rm
me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouri=
ng
under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shin=
ing
subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye=
had
a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted=
, a
trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and=
had
been entirely owing to the ‘parsimony of the public,’ which gui=
lty
public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined mann=
er
on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe=
by
Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
This seemed to me too profound a joke to be
inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversat=
ion
Kenge or to Mr Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have
originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation fr=
om
one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
‘My nature is subdued To what it works i=
n,
like the dyer's hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!’
But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious
public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexi=
on,
I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Cour=
t of
Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley i=
s in
no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a
disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the
monstrous wrong from beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853)
there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ag=
o,
in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time=
, in
which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, wh=
ich
is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination
now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, n=
ot
yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in
which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swall=
owed
up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I cou=
ld
rain them on these pages, to the shame of--a parsimonious public.
There is only one other point on which I offer=
a
word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has
been denied since the death of Mr Krook; and my good friend Mr Lewes (quite
mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by
all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when th=
at
event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly
be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead=
my
readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate
the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famo=
us,
that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated =
and
described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise
distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731,
which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond all ration=
al
doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr Krook's cas=
e.
The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the
historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produce=
d by
France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of
having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitt=
ed
because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which
this name of spontaneous combustion is given. I do not think it necessary to
add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities w=
hich
will be found at page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences =
of
distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more mode=
rn
days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts u=
ntil
there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimon=
y on
which human occurrences are usually received.
In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the
romantic side of familiar things.
1853
* Another case, very clearly described by a
dentist, occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States of America,
quite recently. The subject was a German who kept a liquor-shop and was an
inveterate drunkard.
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the L=
ord
Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As m=
uch
mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of =
the
earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet lon=
g or
so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down
from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as
big as full-grown snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the
death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;
splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's
umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold =
at
street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been
slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding n=
ew
deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenacious=
ly
to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flo=
ws
among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified am=
ong
the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) c=
ity.
Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the
cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the
rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small bo=
ats.
Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the
firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of=
the
wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and
fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the
bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all ro=
und
them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in
the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom =
by
husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their
time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog=
is
densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old
obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old
corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at =
the
very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of
Chancery.
Never can there come fog too thick, never can
there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering
condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinner=
s,
holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High
Chancellor ought to be sitting here--as here he is--with a foggy glory round
his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a
large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable bri=
ef,
and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where=
he
can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the =
High
Court of Chancery bar ought to be--as here they are--mistily engaged in one=
of
the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on
slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their
goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a
pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afterno=
on
the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherit=
ed
it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be--as are they
not?--ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain f=
or
truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk
gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavit=
s,
issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly nonsen=
se,
piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and
there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well
may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day i=
nto
the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through t=
he
glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and=
by
the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord
High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the
attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery,
which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which =
has
its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, wh=
ich
has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing
and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to
monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhau=
sts
finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the
heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would
not give--who does not often give--the warning, ‘Suffer any wrong that
can be done you rather than come here!’
Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court
this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause,=
two
or three counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors bef=
ore
mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and the=
re
are two or three maces, or petty- bags, or privy purses, or whatever they m=
ay
be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement =
ever
falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry
years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, a=
nd
the reporters of the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regu=
lars
when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on a
seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctua=
ry,
is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is always in court, from=
its
sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment =
to
be given in her favour. Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit, =
but
no one knows for certain because no one cares. She carries some small litte=
r in
a reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of paper
matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the
half- dozenth time to make a personal application ‘to purge himself of
his contempt,’ which, being a solitary surviving executor who has fal=
len
into a state of conglomeration about accounts of which it is not pretended =
that
he had ever any knowledge, he is not at all likely ever to do. In the meant=
ime
his prospects in life are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically
appears from Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancell=
or
at the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to
understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after
making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good pla=
ce
and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out ‘My Lord!’ in a
voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising. A few lawyers' cl=
erks
and others who know this suitor by sight linger on the chance of his furnis=
hing
some fun and enlivening the dismal weather a little.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecro=
w of
a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows
what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been obser=
ved
that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without com=
ing
to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have b=
een
born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumer=
able
old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found
themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why;
whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little
plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce a=
nd
Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse,=
and
trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into moth=
ers
and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out;
the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of
mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since =
old
Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery L=
ane;
but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court,
perennially hopeless.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. =
That
is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but i=
t is
a joke in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out =
of
it. Every Chancellor was ‘in it,’ for somebody or other, when he
was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed,
bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port- wine committee after dinner in h=
all.
Articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it.=
The
last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting Mr Blowers, the em=
inent
silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potat=
oes,
he observed, ‘or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr Blower=
s’--a
pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.
How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and
Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt woul=
d be
a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of du=
sty
warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, dow=
n to
the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has copied his tens of
thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man's natu=
re
has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliati=
on,
botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that =
can
never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched
suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr Chizzle, Mizzle, or
otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may h=
ave
got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of Jarndyce and
Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it
but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own
kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely
promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter
and see what can be done for Drizzle--who was not well used--when Jarndyce =
and
Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking in all their
many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even th=
ose
who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil ha=
ve
been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take
their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was =
in
some off-hand manner never meant to go right.
Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart=
of
the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
‘Mr Tangle,’ says the Lord High
Chancellor, latterly something restless under the eloquence of that learned
gentleman.
‘Mlud,’ says Mr Tangle. Mr Tangle
knows more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it--supp=
osed
never to have read anything else since he left school.
‘Have you nearly concluded your argument=
?’
‘Mlud, no--variety of points--feel it my
duty tsubmit--ludship,’ is the reply that slides out of Mr Tangle.
‘Several members of the bar are still to=
be
heard, I believe?’ says the Chancellor with a slight smile.
Eighteen of Mr Tangle's learned friends, each
armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen
hammers in a pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen
places of obscurity.
‘We will proceed with the hearing on
Wednesday fortnight,’ says the Chancellor. For the question at issue =
is
only a question of costs, a mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit,=
and
really will come to a settlement one of these days.
The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the priso=
ner
is brought forward in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, ‘My lor=
d!’
Maces, bags, and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man f=
rom
Shropshire.
‘In reference,’ proceeds the
Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, ‘to the young girl--̵=
7;
‘Begludship's pardon--boy,’ says Mr
Tangle prematurely. ‘In reference,’ proceeds the Chancellor with
extra distinctness, ‘to the young girl and boy, the two young people&=
#8217;--Mr
Tangle crushed-- ‘whom I directed to be in attendance to-day and who =
are
now in my private room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expedi=
ency
of making the order for their residing with their uncle.’
Mr Tangle on his legs again. ‘Begludship=
's
pardon--dead.’
‘With their’--Chancellor looking
through his double eye-glass at the papers on his desk--’grandfather.=
’
‘Begludship's pardon--victim of rash
action--brains.’
Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific
bass voice arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and
says, ‘Will your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin,
several times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court =
in
what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin.’
Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulch=
ral
message) ringing in the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops,=
and
the fog knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
‘I will speak with both the young people=
,’
says the Chancellor anew, ‘and satisfy myself on the subject of their=
residing
with their cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take =
my
seat.’
The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when=
the
prisoner is presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's
conglomeration but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The m=
an
from Shropshire ventures another remonstrative ‘My lord!’ but t=
he
Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody else
quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with heavy charges of
papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old woman marches off with=
her
documents; the empty court is locked up. If all the injustice it has commit=
ted
and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the w=
hole
burnt away in a great funeral pyre--why so much the better for other parties
than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion th=
at
we want on this same miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chanc=
ery
but that we may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Bo=
th
the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and
usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange games throug=
h a
deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the knight will wake one d=
ay,
when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!=
It is not a large world. Relatively even to th=
is
world of ours, which has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when y=
ou
have made the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it =
is a
very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and true
people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is that it is a
world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot he=
ar
the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round =
the
sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want=
of
air.
My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in t=
own
for a few days previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship inte=
nds
to stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The fashionable
intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians, and it knows all
fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to be unfashionable. My L=
ady
Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in familiar conversation, her R=
16;place’
in Lincolnshire. The waters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge =
in
the park has been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for
half a mile in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for island=
s in
it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. My La=
dy
Dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. The weather for many a day and n=
ight
has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and
prunings of the woodman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. The
deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle
loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little
cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for t=
he
falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is alternately a
lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases on the stone terrace=
in
the foreground catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall--drip, drip,
drip--upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Wal=
k,
all night. On Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pu=
lpit
breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of =
the
ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looki=
ng
out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge and seeing t=
he light
of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a
child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining fig=
ure
of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of temp=
er.
My Lady Dedlock says she has been ‘bored to death.’
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from t=
he
place in Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the
rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the
Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere
lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms shutt=
ing
up the shutters. And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable
intelligence--which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present,=
but
not the future--cannot yet undertake to say.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but t=
here
is no mightier baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and
infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might =
get
on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the who=
le
admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed wi=
th a
park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county f=
amilies.
He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and
meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to
mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrit=
y.
He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudic=
ed,
perfectly unreasonable man.
Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, o=
lder
than my Lady. He will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor
yet sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a little
stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair and whiskers,=
his
fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright
buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious, stately, most polite on every
occasion to my Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest
estimation. His gallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he cour=
ted
her, is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.
Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper sti=
ll
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.
How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds =
to
conquer, everybody knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matt=
er
having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered =
HER
world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing, mood. An
exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to =
be
ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory. She is
perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to heaven to-morrow, she mi=
ght
be expected to ascend without any rapture.
She has beauty still, and if it be not in its
heyday, it is not yet in its autumn. She has a fine face--originally of a
character that would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improv=
ed
into classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her =
figure
is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is so, but that &=
#8216;the
most is made,’ as the Honourable Bob Stables has frequently asserted =
upon
oath, ‘of all her points.’ The same authority observes that she=
is
perfectly got up and remarks in commendation of her hair especially that sh=
e is
the best-groomed woman in the whole stud.
With all her perfections on her head, my Lady
Dedlock has come up from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the
fashionable intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous =
to
her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, aft=
er
which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town, upon this mudd=
y,
murky afternoon, presents himself an old- fashioned old gentleman, attorney=
-at-law
and eke solicitor of the High Court of Chancery, who has the honour of acti=
ng
as legal adviser of the Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his off=
ice
with that name outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the
conjuror's trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set.
Across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the
rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of
it--fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in--the old gentleman is
conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady's presence.
The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is
reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements a=
nd
aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious h=
alo
of family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository. Th=
ere
are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks among =
the
growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than wa=
lk
abroad among men, shut up in the breast of Mr Tulkinghorn. He is of what is
called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any school that seems nev=
er
to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters =
or
stockings. One peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings,=
be
they silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to
any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses when not
professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless but quite at ho=
me,
at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses and near doors of
drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable intelligence is eloquent, w=
here
everybody knows him and where half the Peerage stops to say ‘How do y=
ou
do, Mr Tulkinghorn?’ He receives these salutations with gravity and
buries them along with the rest of his knowledge.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is h=
appy
to see Mr Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is
always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of tribute. He
likes Mr Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute in that too. It is
eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general way, retainer-like. It
expresses, as it were, the steward of the legal mysteries, the butler of the
legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.
Has Mr Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It
may be so, or it may not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be n=
oted
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--seei=
ng
herself in her glass, where indeed she looks so. Yet every dim little star
revolving about her, from her maid to the manager of the Italian Opera, kno=
ws
her weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives =
upon
as accurate a calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her
dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new custom,=
a
new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a =
new
chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are deferential people in a doz=
en
callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before he=
r,
who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but
nurse her all their lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound
subservience, lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one,
hook all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet of
the majestic Lilliput. ‘If you want to address our people, sir,’
say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people Lady Dedlock and
the rest--’you must remember that you are not dealing with the general
public; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and their weakest p=
lace
is such a place.’ ‘To make this article go down, gentlemen,R=
17;
say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to their friends the manufacturers, ̵=
6;you
must come to us, because we know where to have the fashionable people, and =
we
can make it fashionable.’ ‘If you want to get this print upon t=
he
tables of my high connexion, sir,’ says Mr Sladdery, the librarian, &=
#8216;or
if you want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of my high
connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for I have been
accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion, sir, and I may tell y=
ou
without vanity that I can turn them round my finger’-- in which Mr
Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not exaggerate at all.
Therefore, while Mr Tulkinghorn may not know w=
hat
is passing in the Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.=
‘My Lady's cause has been again before t=
he
Chancellor, has it, Mr Tulkinghorn?’ says Sir Leicester, giving him h=
is
hand.
‘Yes. It has been on again to-day,’=
; Mr
Tulkinghorn replies, making one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a s=
ofa
near the fire, shading her face with a hand-screen.
‘It would be useless to ask,’ says=
my
Lady with the dreariness of the place in Lincolnshire still upon her, ̵=
6;whether
anything has been done.’
‘Nothing that YOU would call anything has
been done to-day,’ replies Mr Tulkinghorn.
‘Nor ever will be,’ says my Lady.<= o:p>
Sir Leicester has no objection to an intermina=
ble
Chancery suit. It is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thi=
ng.
To be sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part in
which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a shadowy
impression that for his name--the name of Dedlock--to be in a cause, and no=
t in
the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous accident. But he regards the
Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice=
and
a trifling amount of confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a
variety of other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the etern=
al
settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole of a
fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints
respecting it would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to ris=
e up
somewhere--like Wat Tyler.
‘As a few fresh affidavits have been put
upon the file,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, ‘and as they are short, an=
d as
I proceed upon the troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my cli=
ents
with any new proceedings in a cause’--cautious man Mr Tulkinghorn, ta=
king
no more responsibility than necessary--’and further, as I see you are
going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket.’
(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the =
by,
but the delight of the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)
Mr Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks
permission to place them on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow,
puts on his spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.
‘'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce--'&=
#8216;
My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as =
many
of the formal horrors as he can.
Mr Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and
begins again lower down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her
attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to =
have
a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging among=
the
national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my Lady sits and t=
hat
the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless but small. My
Lady, changing her position, sees the papers on the table--looks at them
nearer--looks at them nearer still--asks impulsively, ‘Who copied tha=
t?’
Mr Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my La=
dy's
animation and her unusual tone.
‘Is it what you people call law-hand?=
217;
she asks, looking full at him in her careless way again and toying with her
screen.
‘Not quite. Probably’--Mr Tulkingh=
orn
examines it as he speaks-- ‘the legal character which it has was acqu=
ired
after the original hand was formed. Why do you ask?’
‘Anything to vary this detestable monoto=
ny.
Oh, go on, do!’
Mr Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greate=
r;
my Lady screens her face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and crie=
s, ‘Eh?
What do you say?’
‘I say I am afraid,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily, ‘that Lady Dedlock is ill.’=
‘Faint,’ my Lady murmurs with white
lips, ‘only that; but it is like the faintness of death. Don't speak =
to
me. Ring, and take me to my room!’
Mr Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; b=
ells
ring, feet shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr
Tulkinghorn to return.
‘Better now,’ quoth Sir Leicester,
motioning the lawyer to sit down and read to him alone. ‘I have been
quite alarmed. I never knew my Lady swoon before. But the weather is extrem=
ely
trying, and she really has been bored to death down at our place in
Lincolnshire.’
I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning=
to
write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew
that. I can remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say t=
o my
doll when we were alone together, ‘Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you k=
now
very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!’ And so she =
used
to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful complexion and r=
osy
lips, staring at me--or not so much at me, I think, as at nothing--while I
busily stitched away and told her every one of my secrets.
My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing
that I seldom dared to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to
anybody else. It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be t=
o me
when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and say, &=
#8216;Oh,
you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!’ and then =
to
sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great chair, and tell he=
r all
I had noticed since we parted. I had always rather a noticing way--not a qu=
ick
way, oh, no!--a silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking I
should like to understand it better. I have not by any means a quick
understanding. When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brigh=
ten.
But even that may be my vanity.
I was brought up, from my earliest
remembrance--like some of the princesses in the fairy stories, only I was n=
ot
charming--by my godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a goo=
d,
good woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning pra=
yers
on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there were lectures; and
never missed. She was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, would have been=
(I
used to think) like an angel--but she never smiled. She was always grave and
strict. She was so very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other
people made her frown all her life. I felt so different from her, even maki=
ng
every allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so
poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained with
her--no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very sorry to
consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and I used ardentl=
y to
hope that I might have a better heart; and I talked it over very often with=
the
dear old doll, but I never loved my godmother as I ought to have loved her =
and
as I felt I must have loved her if I had been a better girl.
This made me, I dare say, more timid and retir=
ing
than I naturally was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I =
felt
at ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing that
helped it very much.
I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had nev=
er heard
of my papa either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never wo=
rn a
black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's grave=
. I
had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been taught to pray for a=
ny
relation but my godmother. I had more than once approached this subject of =
my
thoughts with Mrs Rachael, our only servant, who took my light away when I =
was
in bed (another very good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said,=
‘Esther,
good night!’ and gone away and left me.
Although there were seven girls at the
neighbouring school where I was a day boarder, and although they called me
little Esther Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older
than I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there see=
med
to be some other separation between us besides that, and besides their being
far more clever than I was and knowing much more than I did. One of them in=
the
first week of my going to the school (I remember it very well) invited me h=
ome
to a little party, to my great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter
declining for me, and I never went. I never went out at all.
It was my birthday. There were holidays at sch=
ool
on other birthdays--none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other
birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one another--the=
re
were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy day at home in the w=
hole
year.
I have mentioned that unless my vanity should
deceive me (as I know it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it,
though indeed I don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is.=
My
disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such a wou=
nd
if such a wound could be received more than once with the quickness of that
birthday.
Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were
sitting at the table before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; n=
ot
another sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know h=
ow
long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the table at =
my
godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, ‘It would h=
ave
been far better, little Esther, that you had had no birthday, that you had
never been born!’
I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, =
8216;Oh,
dear godmother, tell me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?̵=
7;
‘No,’ she returned. ‘Ask me =
no
more, child!’
‘Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do
now, at last, dear godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I
lose her? Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,
dear godmother? No, no, no, don't go away. Oh, speak to me!’
I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and=
I
caught hold of her dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all t=
he
while, ‘Let me go!’ But now she stood still.
Her darkened face had such power over me that =
it
stopped me in the midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand =
to
clasp hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew=
it
as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She raised me, sat=
in
her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly in a cold, low voice--I =
see
her knitted brow and pointed finger--’Your mother, Esther, is your
disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come--and soon enough--when you =
will
understand this better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I =
have
forgiven her’--but her face did not relent--’the wrong she did =
to
me, and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever
know--than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,
unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil
anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon your
head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave all other
people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that greatest kindness. =
Now,
go!’
She checked me, however, as I was about to dep=
art
from her--so frozen as I was!--and added this, ‘Submission, self-deni=
al,
diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on =
it.
You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, l=
ike
them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.’
I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and la=
id
my doll's cheek against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary frie=
nd
upon my bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my
sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's heart=
and
that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed a=
lone
together afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my
birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could to re=
pair
the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt guilty and yet
innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be industrious, contented, and
kind-hearted and to do some good to some one, and win some love to myself i=
f I
could. I hope it is not self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it=
. I
am very thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming =
to
my eyes.
There! I have wiped them away now and can go on
again properly.
I felt the distance between my godmother and
myself so much more after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a p=
lace
in her house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficul=
t of
approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than ever. I =
felt
in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in the same way toward=
s Mrs
Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards her daughter, of whom she was pro=
ud,
who came to see her once a fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tri=
ed
to be very diligent.
One sunny afternoon when I had come home from =
school
with my books and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I w=
as
gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the
parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found-- which was very
unusual indeed--a stranger. A portly, important- looking gentleman, dressed=
all
in black, with a white cravat, large gold watch seals, a pair of gold
eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon his little finger.
‘This,’ said my godmother in an
undertone, ‘is the child.’ Then she said in her naturally stern=
way
of speaking, ‘This is Esther, sir.’
The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look a=
t me
and said, ‘Come here, my dear!’ He shook hands with me and aske=
d me
to take off my bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he=
said,
‘Ah!’ and afterwards ‘Yes!’ And then, taking off his
eye-glasses and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-cha=
ir,
turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod. Upon t=
hat,
my godmother said, ‘You may go upstairs, Esther!’ And I made hi=
m my
curtsy and left him.
It must have been two years afterwards, and I =
was
almost fourteen, when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the
fireside. I was reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at ni=
ne
o'clock as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St. =
John
how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they
brought the sinful woman to him.
‘So when they continued asking him, he
lifted up himself and said unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at her!'‘
I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting
her hand to her head, and crying out in an awful voice from quite another p=
art
of the book, ‘'Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you
sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'‘
In an instant, while she stood before me repea=
ting
these words, she fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice
had sounded through the house and been heard in the street.
She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week
she lay there, little altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute fro=
wn
that I so well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day =
and
in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be
plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her
blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she =
knew
or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immovable. To the very last, and even
afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened.
On the day after my poor good godmother was
buried, the gentleman in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was s=
ent
for by Mrs Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone
away.
‘My name is Kenge,’ he said; ̵=
6;you
may remember it, my child; Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn.’
I replied that I remembered to have seen him o=
nce
before.
‘Pray be seated--here near me. Don't
distress yourself; it's of no use. Mrs Rachael, I needn't inform you who we=
re
acquainted with the late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her
and that this young lady, now her aunt is dead--’
‘My aunt, sir!’
‘It is really of no use carrying on a
deception when no object is to be gained by it,’ said Mr Kenge smooth=
ly, ‘Aunt
in fact, though not in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't trem=
ble!
Mrs Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a-- Jarndyce and
Jarndyce.’
‘Never,’ said Mrs Rachael.
‘Is it possible,’ pursued Mr Kenge,
putting up his eye-glasses, ‘that our young friend--I BEG you won't
distress yourself!--never heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!’
I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
‘Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?’ sa=
id Mr
Kenge, looking over his glasses at me and softly turning the case about and
about as if he were petting something. ‘Not of one of the greatest
Chancery suits known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce--the--a--in itself a
monument of Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, eve=
ry
contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that
court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause that could not exi=
st
out of this free and great country. I should say that the aggregate of cost=
s in
Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs Rachael’--I was afraid he addressed himsel=
f to
her because I appeared inattentive’--amounts at the present hour to f=
rom
SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty THOUSAND POUNDS!’ said Mr Kenge, leaning back in h=
is
chair.
I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I w=
as
so entirely unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it
even then.
‘And she really never heard of the cause=
!’
said Mr Kenge. ‘Surprising!’
‘Miss Barbary, sir,’ returned Mrs
Rachael, ‘who is now among the Seraphim--’
‘I hope so, I am sure,’ said Mr Ke=
nge politely.
‘--Wished Esther only to know what would=
be
serviceable to her. And she knows, from any teaching she has had here, noth=
ing
more.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Kenge. ‘Upon=
the
whole, very proper. Now to the point,’ addressing me. ‘Miss
Barbary, your sole relation (in fact that is, for I am bound to observe tha=
t in
law you had none) being deceased and it naturally not being to be expected =
that
Mrs Rachael--’
‘Oh, dear no!’ said Mrs Rachael
quickly.
‘Quite so,’ assented Mr Kenge; =
216;--that
Mrs Rachael should charge herself with your maintenance and support (I beg =
you
won't distress yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an
offer which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and
which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the
lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow that I
represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly humane, but at =
the
same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself by any stretch of my
professional caution?’ said Mr Kenge, leaning back in his chair again=
and
looking calmly at us both.
He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sou=
nd
of his own voice. I couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and
gave great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with
obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with h=
is
head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much impressed by
him--even then, before I knew that he formed himself on the model of a great
lord who was his client and that he was generally called Conversation Kenge=
.
‘Mr Jarndyce,’ he pursued, ‘=
being
aware of the--I would say, desolate--position of our young friend, offers to
place her at a first-rate establishment where her education shall be comple=
ted,
where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be
anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in
that station of life unto which it has pleased--shall I say Providence?--to
call her.’
My heart was filled so full, both by what he s=
aid
and by his affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, tho=
ugh
I tried.
‘Mr Jarndyce,’ he went on, ‘=
makes
no condition beyond expressing his expectation that our young friend will n=
ot
at any time remove herself from the establishment in question without his
knowledge and concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the
acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she will be
ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of virtue and honour,
and--the--a--so forth.’
I was still less able to speak than before.
‘Now, what does our young friend say?=
217;
proceeded Mr Kenge. ‘Take time, take time! I pause for her reply. But
take time!’
What the destitute subject of such an offer tr=
ied
to say, I need not repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it
were worth the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I c=
ould
never relate.
This interview took place at Windsor, where I =
had
passed (as far as I knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided w=
ith
all necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.
Mrs Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at
parting, but I was not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to
have known her better after so many years and ought to have made myself eno=
ugh
of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one cold
parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch--it wa=
s a
very frosty day--I felt so miserable and self-reproachful that I clung to h=
er
and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily=
!
‘No, Esther!’ she returned. ‘=
;It
is your misfortune!’
The coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had =
not
come out until we heard the wheels--and thus I left her, with a sorrowful
heart. She went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut t=
he
door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the window
through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs Rachael all the little property=
she
possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old hearth-rug with roses on =
it,
which always seemed to me the first thing in the world I had ever seen, was
hanging outside in the frost and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped t=
he
dear old doll in her own shawl and quietly laid her--I am half ashamed to t=
ell
it--in the garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no
companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.
When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my
bird-cage in the straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of t=
he
high window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of
spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and the s=
un,
so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like metal where the
skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There was a gentleman in the
coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked very large in a quantity of
wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the other window and took no notice of =
me.
I thought of my dead godmother, of the night w=
hen
I read to her, of her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the
strange place I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what t=
hey
would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the coach gav=
e me
a terrible start.
It said, ‘What the de-vil are you crying
for?’
I was so frightened that I lost my voice and c=
ould
only answer in a whisper, ‘Me, sir?’ For of course I knew it mu=
st
have been the gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still
looking out of his window.
‘Yes, you,’ he said, turning round=
.
‘I didn't know I was crying, sir,’=
I
faltered.
‘But you are!’ said the gentleman.=
‘Look
here!’ He came quite opposite to me from the other corner of the coac=
h,
brushed one of his large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me=
),
and showed me that it was wet.
‘There! Now you know you are,’ he
said. ‘Don't you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘And what are you crying for?’ said
the gentleman, ‘Don't you want to go there?’
‘Where, sir?’
‘Where? Why, wherever you are going,R=
17;
said the gentleman.
‘I am very glad to go there, sir,’=
I
answered.
‘Well, then! Look glad!’ said the
gentleman.
I thought he was very strange, or at least that
what I could see of him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin,
and his face was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the si=
de
of his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not afra=
id
of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying because of my
godmother's death and because of Mrs Rachael's not being sorry to part with=
me.
‘Confound Mrs Rachael!’ said the
gentleman. ‘Let her fly away in a high wind on a broomstick!’
I began to be really afraid of him now and loo=
ked
at him with the greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant e=
yes,
although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and calling Mrs
Rachael names.
After a little while he opened his outer wrapp=
er,
which appeared to me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his a=
rm
down into a deep pocket in the side.
‘Now, look here!’ he said. ‘=
In
this paper,’ which was nicely folded, ‘is a piece of the best
plum-cake that can be got for money--sugar on the outside an inch thick, li=
ke
fat on mutton chops. Here's a little pie (a gem this is, both for size and
quality), made in France. And what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of f=
at
geese. There's a pie! Now let's see you eat 'em.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I replied; ̵=
6;thank
you very much indeed, but I hope you won't be offended--they are too rich f=
or
me.’
‘Floored again!’ said the gentlema=
n,
which I didn't at all understand, and threw them both out of window.
He did not speak to me any more until he got o=
ut
of the coach a little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good
girl and to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved=
by
his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it afterward=
s,
and never for a long time without thinking of him and half expecting to meet
him. But I never did; and so, as time went on, he passed out of my mind.
When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looke=
d up
at the window and said, ‘Miss Donny.’
‘No, ma'am, Esther Summerson.’
‘That is quite right,’ said the la=
dy, ‘Miss
Donny.’
I now understood that she introduced herself by
that name, and begged Miss Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my
boxes at her request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put
outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid, and I g=
ot
inside and were driven away.
‘Everything is ready for you, Esther,=
217;
said Miss Donny, ‘and the scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in
exact accordance with the wishes of your guardian, Mr Jarndyce.’
‘Of--did you say, ma'am?’
‘Of your guardian, Mr Jarndyce,’ s=
aid
Miss Donny.
I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the
cold had been too severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.
‘Do you know my--guardian, Mr Jarndyce,
ma'am?’ I asked after a good deal of hesitation.
‘Not personally, Esther,’ said Miss
Donny; ‘merely through his solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of
London. A very superior gentleman, Mr Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of=
his
periods quite majestic!’
I felt this to be very true but was too confus=
ed
to attend to it. Our speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to
recover myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the uncert=
ain
and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's house) that
afternoon!
But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted=
to
the routine of Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a gre=
at
while and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my
godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than Greenle=
af.
There was a time for everything all round the dial of the clock, and everyt=
hing
was done at its appointed moment.
We were twelve boarders, and there were two Mi=
ss
Donnys, twins. It was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on=
my
qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in everything =
that
was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in helping to instruct
others. Although I was treated in every other respect like the rest of the
school, this single difference was made in my case from the first. As I beg=
an
to know more, I taught more, and so in course of time I had plenty to do, w=
hich
I was very fond of doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last,
whenever a new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so
sure--indeed I don't know why--to make a friend of me that all new-comers w=
ere
confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I am sure THEY were! I
often thought of the resolution I had made on my birthday to try to be
industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do some good to some one and
win some love if I could; and indeed, indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have
done so little and have won so much.
I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I
never saw in any face there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would ha=
ve
been better if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought m=
e so
many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful with them
from New Year's Day to Christmas.
In those six years I had never been away excep=
t on
visits at holiday time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or =
so I
had taken Miss Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to Mr
Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval I had wri=
tten
such a letter. I had received a formal answer acknowledging its receipt and
saying, ‘We note the contents thereof, which shall be duly communicat=
ed
to our client.’ After that I sometimes heard Miss Donny and her siste=
r mention
how regular my accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to wri=
te a
similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same answer=
in
the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy in another writ=
ing,
which I supposed to be Mr Kenge's.
It seems so curious to me to be obliged to wri=
te
all this about myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! =
But
my little body will soon fall into the background now.
Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the=
second
time) I had passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be =
in a
looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when, one
November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.
Old Square, Lincoln's Inn
Madam,
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
Our clt Mr Jarndyce being abt to rece into his
house, under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this cause, for
whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn, directs us to inform you that he =
will
be glad of your serces in the afsd capacity.
We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage
free, pr eight o'clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next, to White
Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of our clks will be in waiting =
to
convey you to our offe as above.
We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,
Kenge and Carboy
Miss Esther Summerson
Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emo=
tion
this letter caused in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much f=
or
me, it was so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made=
my
orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful natures
towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would have had them less
sorry--I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it, and the pain of it, and the
pride and joy of it, and the humble regret of it were so blended that my he=
art
seemed almost breaking while it was full of rapture.
The letter gave me only five days' notice of my
removal. When every minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that we=
re
given me in those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they
took me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and =
when
some cried, ‘Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my bedside, whe=
re
you first spoke so kindly to me!’ and when others asked me only to wr=
ite
their names, ‘With Esther's love,’ and when they all surrounded=
me
with their parting presents and clung to me weeping and cried, ‘What
shall we do when dear, dear Esther's gone!’ and when I tried to tell =
them
how forbearing and how good they had all been to me and how I blessed and
thanked them every one, what a heart I had!
And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to
part with me as the least among them, and when the maids said, ‘Bless
you, miss, wherever you go!’ and when the ugly lame old gardener, who=
I
thought had hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the co=
ach
to give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the light of
his eyes--indeed the old man said so!-- what a heart I had then!
And could I help it if with all this, and the
coming to the little school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children
outside waving their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman=
and
lady whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited =
(who
were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring for nothing
but calling out, ‘Good-bye, Esther. May you be very happy!’--co=
uld
I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by myself and said ‘=
Oh,
I am so thankful, I am so thankful!’ many times over!
But of course I soon considered that I must not
take tears where I was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore=
, of
course, I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying v=
ery
often, ‘Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!’ I cheer=
ed
myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was longer about it tha=
n I
ought to have been; and when I had cooled my eyes with lavender water, it w=
as
time to watch for London.
I was quite persuaded that we were there when =
we
were ten miles off, and when we really were there, that we should never get
there. However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and particular=
ly
when every other conveyance seemed to be running into us, and we seemed to =
be
running into every other conveyance, I began to believe that we really were
approaching the end of our journey. Very soon afterwards we stopped.
A young gentleman who had inked himself by
accident addressed me from the pavement and said, ‘I am from Kenge and
Carboy's, miss, of Lincoln's Inn.’
‘If you please, sir,’ said I.
He was very obliging, and as he handed me into=
a
fly after superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there=
was
a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown smoke th=
at
scarcely anything was to be seen.
‘Oh, dear no, miss,’ he said. R=
16;This
is a London particular.’
I had never heard of such a thing.
‘A fog, miss,’ said the young
gentleman.
‘Oh, indeed!’ said I.
We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darke=
st
streets that ever were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distract=
ing
state of confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until =
we
passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through a sil=
ent square
until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there was an entrance up a
steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance to a church. And there real=
ly
was a churchyard outside under some cloisters, for I saw the gravestones fr=
om
the staircase window.
This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentlem=
an
showed me through an outer office into Mr Kenge's room--there was no one in
it--and politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my
attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side of the
chimney-piece.
‘In case you should wish to look at
yourself, miss, after the journey, as you're going before the Chancellor. N=
ot
that it's requisite, I am sure,’ said the young gentleman civilly.
‘Going before the Chancellor?’ I s=
aid,
startled for a moment.
‘Only a matter of form, miss,’
returned the young gentleman. ‘Mr Kenge is in court now. He left his
compliments, and would you partake of some refreshment’--there were
biscuits and a decanter of wine on a small table--’and look over the
paper,’ which the young gentleman gave me as he spoke. He then stirred
the fire and left me.
Everything was so strange--the stranger from i=
ts
being night in the day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and
looking raw and cold--that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing
what they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it w=
as
of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep at my bon=
net
in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the room, which was not h=
alf
lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables, and at the piles of writings, and=
at
a bookcase full of the most inexpressive-looking books that ever had anythi=
ng
to say for themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the
fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on flickering=
and
guttering, and there were no snuffers--until the young gentleman by and by
brought a very dirty pair--for two hours.
At last Mr Kenge came. HE was not altered, but=
he
was surprised to see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. ‘As
you are going to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the
Chancellor's private room, Miss Summerson,’ he said, ‘we though=
t it
well that you should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by =
the
Lord Chancellor, I dare say?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I don't
think I shall,’ really not seeing on consideration why I should be.
So Mr Kenge gave me his arm and we went round =
the
corner, under a colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a
passage, into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young
gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was
interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, talkin=
g.
They both looked up when I came in, and I saw =
in
the young lady, with the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With
such rich golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,
trusting face!
‘Miss Ada,’ said Mr Kenge, ‘=
this
is Miss Summerson.’
She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and
her hand extended, but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me.=
In
short, she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few
minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the fire upon=
us,
talking together as free and happy as could be.
What a load off my mind! It was so delightful =
to
know that she could confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so
encouraging to me!
The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she
told me, and his name Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an
ingenuous face and a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to
where we sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like=
a
light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if quite=
so
much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were both orphans and (=
what
was very unexpected and curious to me) had never met before that day. Our a=
ll
three coming together for the first time in such an unusual place was a thi=
ng
to talk about, and we talked about it; and the fire, which had left off
roaring, winked its red eyes at us--as Richard said--like a drowsy old Chan=
cery
lion.
We conversed in a low tone because a full-dres=
sed
gentleman in a bag wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we c=
ould
hear a drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel=
in
our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr Kenge that the Chancell=
or
would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a bustle and a tread of
feet, and Mr Kenge said that the Court had risen and his lordship was in the
next room.
The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door
almost directly and requested Mr Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went i=
nto
the next room, Mr Kenge first, with my darling--it is so natural to me now =
that
I can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and sitting in=
an
arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship, whose robe, trimmed w=
ith
beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another chair. He gave us a searching =
look
as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind.
The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of
papers on his lordship's table, and his lordship silently selected one and
turned over the leaves.
‘Miss Clare,’ said the Lord
Chancellor. ‘Miss Ada Clare?’
Mr Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged
her to sit down near him. That he admired her and was interested by her eve=
n I
could see in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young
creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord High
Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pri=
de
of parents.
‘The Jarndyce in question,’ said t=
he
Lord Chancellor, still turning over leaves, ‘is Jarndyce of Bleak Hou=
se.’
‘Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,’
said Mr Kenge.
‘A dreary name,’ said the Lord
Chancellor.
‘But not a dreary place at present, my l=
ord,’
said Mr Kenge.
‘And Bleak House,’ said his lordsh=
ip, ‘is
in--’
‘Hertfordshire, my lord.’
‘Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House is not marri=
ed?’
said his lordship.
‘He is not, my lord,’ said Mr Keng=
e.
A pause.
‘Young Mr Richard Carstone is present?=
8217;
said the Lord Chancellor, glancing towards him.
Richard bowed and stepped forward.
‘Hum!’ said the Lord Chancellor,
turning over more leaves.
‘Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord,=
217;
Mr Kenge observed in a low voice, ‘if I may venture to remind your
lordship, provides a suitable companion for--’
‘For Mr Richard Carstone?’ I thoug=
ht
(but I am not quite sure) I heard his lordship say in an equally low voice =
and
with a smile.
‘For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young l=
ady.
Miss Summerson.’
His lordship gave me an indulgent look and
acknowledged my curtsy very graciously.
‘Miss Summerson is not related to any pa=
rty
in the cause, I think?’
‘No, my lord.’
Mr Kenge leant over before it was quite said a=
nd
whispered. His lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded tw=
ice
or thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again until=
we
were going away.
Mr Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to
where I was, near the door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that aga=
in I
can't help it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship sp=
oke
a little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had well
reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she would be happy
under the roof of Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why she thought so? Prese=
ntly
he rose courteously and released her, and then he spoke for a minute or two=
with
Richard Carstone, not seated, but standing, and altogether with more ease a=
nd
less ceremony, as if he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go
straight to the candour of a boy.
‘Very well!’ said his lordship alo=
ud. ‘I
shall make the order. Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may
judge,’ and this was when he looked at me, ‘a very good compani=
on
for the young lady, and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which =
the
circumstances admit.’
He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went ou=
t,
very much obliged to him for being so affable and polite, by which he had
certainly lost no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.
When we got under the colonnade, Mr Kenge
remembered that he must go back for a moment to ask a question and left us =
in
the fog, with the Lord Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to
come out.
‘Well!’ said Richard Carstone. =
216;THAT'S
over! And where do we go next, Miss Summerson?’
‘Don't you know?’ I said.
‘Not in the least,’ said he.
‘And don't YOU know, my love?’ I a=
sked
Ada.
‘No!’ said she. ‘Don't you?&=
#8217;
‘Not at all!’ said I.
We looked at one another, half laughing at our
being like the children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a
squeezed bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us
with an air of great ceremony.
‘Oh!’ said she. ‘The wards in
Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to have the honour! It is a good omen for
youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and do=
n't
know what's to come of it.’
‘Mad!’ whispered Richard, not thin=
king
she could hear him.
‘Right! Mad, young gentleman,’ she
returned so quickly that he was quite abashed. ‘I was a ward myself. I
was not mad at that time,’ curtsying low and smiling between every li=
ttle
sentence. ‘I had youth and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very
little now. Neither of the three served or saved me. I have the honour to
attend court regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On=
the
Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the
Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray accept my
blessing.’
As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to hum=
our
the poor old lady, that we were much obliged to her.
‘Ye-es!’ she said mincingly. ̵=
6;I
imagine so. And here is Conversation Kenge. With HIS documents! How does yo=
ur
honourable worship do?’
‘Quite well, quite well! Now don't be
troublesome, that's a good soul!’ said Mr Kenge, leading the way back=
.
‘By no means,’ said the poor old l=
ady,
keeping up with Ada and me. ‘Anything but troublesome. I shall confer
estates on both--which is not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgme=
nt.
Shortly. On the Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my
blessing!’
She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad
flight of stairs; but we looked back as we went up, and she was still there,
saying, still with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, R=
16;Youth.
And hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept=
my
blessing!’
We were to pass the night, Mr Kenge told us wh=
en
we arrived in his room, at Mrs Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said=
he
took it for granted I knew who Mrs Jellyby was.
‘I really don't, sir,’ I returned.=
‘Perhaps
Mr Carstone--or Miss Clare--’
But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs
Jellyby. ‘In-deed! Mrs Jellyby,’ said Mr Kenge, standing with h=
is
back to the fire and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it we=
re Mrs
Jellyby's biography, ‘is a lady of very remarkable strength of charac=
ter
who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an
extensive variety of public subjects at various times and is at present (un=
til
something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view =
to
the general cultivation of the coffee berry--
Mr Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at=
us.
‘And Mr Jellyby, sir?’ suggested
Richard. ‘Ah! Mr Jellyby,’ said Mr Kenge, ‘is--a--I don't
know that I can describe him to you better than by saying that he is the
husband of Mrs Jellyby.’
‘A nonentity, sir?’ said Richard w=
ith
a droll look.
‘I don't say that,’ returned Mr Ke=
nge
gravely. ‘I can't say that, indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr
Jellyby. I never, to my knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr Jellyby. He
may be a very superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the =
more
shining qualities of his wife.’ Mr Kenge proceeded to tell us that as=
the
road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and tedious on such an
evening, and as we had been travelling already, Mr Jarndyce had himself
proposed this arrangement. A carriage would be at Mrs Jellyby's to convey us
out of town early in the forenoon of to-morrow.
He then rang a little bell, and the young
gentleman came in. Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr Kenge inquired
whether Miss Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been ‘=
sent
round.’ Mr Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was
waiting to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
‘Then it only remains,’ said Mr Ke=
nge,
shaking hands with us, ‘for me to express my lively satisfaction in (=
good
day, Miss Clare!) the arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to yo=
u,
Miss Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the (gl=
ad
to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr Carstone!) welfare, =
the
advantage in all points of view, of all concerned! Guppy, see the party saf=
ely
there.’
‘Where IS 'there,' Mr Guppy?’ said
Richard as we went downstairs.
‘No distance,’ said Mr Guppy; R=
16;round
in Thavies Inn, you know.’
‘I can't say I know where it is, for I c=
ome
from Winchester and am strange in London.’
‘Only round the corner,’ said Mr
Guppy. ‘We just twist up Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and th=
ere
we are in four minutes' time, as near as a toucher. This is about a London
particular NOW, ain't it, miss?’ He seemed quite delighted with it on=
my
account.
‘The fog is very dense indeed!’ sa=
id
I.
‘Not that it affects you, though, I'm su=
re,’
said Mr Guppy, putting up the steps. ‘On the contrary, it seems to do=
you
good, miss, judging from your appearance.’
I knew he meant well in paying me this complim=
ent,
so I laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got
upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience a=
nd
the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our
destination--a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold =
the
fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children,
gathered about the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass p=
late
on the door with the inscription JELLYBY.
‘Don't be frightened!’ said Mr Gup=
py,
looking in at the coach- window. ‘One of the young Jellybys been and =
got
his head through the area railings!’
‘Oh, poor child,’ said I; ‘l=
et
me out, if you please!’
‘Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The
young Jellybys are always up to something,’ said Mr Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of
the dirtiest little unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and
frightened and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings,
while a milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were
endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression that =
his
skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him) tha=
t he
was a little boy with a naturally large head, I thought that perhaps where =
his
head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode of
extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably received by
the milkman and beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the =
area
if I had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr Guppy ran down through =
the
kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last he was happily got
down without any accident, and then he began to beat Mr Guppy with a hoop-s=
tick
in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house exc=
ept
a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a bro=
om;
I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore suppo=
sed
that Mrs Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised when the person
appeared in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room =
on
the first floor before Ada and me, announced us as, ‘Them two young
ladies, Missis Jellyby!’ We passed several more children on the way u=
p,
whom it was difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into=
Mrs
Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs--down a w=
hole
flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the
uneasiness which we could not help showing in our own faces as the dear chi=
ld's
head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards sa=
id
he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us with perfect
equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to
fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to lo=
ok a
long way off. As if--I am quoting Richard again--they could see nothing nea=
rer
than Africa!
‘I am very glad indeed,’ said Mrs
Jellyby in an agreeable voice, ‘to have the pleasure of receiving you=
. I
have a great respect for Mr Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested c=
an
be an object of indifference to me.’
We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down
behind the door, where there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs Jellyby had =
very
good hair but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The
shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair when she
advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help
noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back and that the open sp=
ace
was railed across with a lattice-work of stay-lace--like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nea=
rly
filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must sa=
y,
not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that
with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed=
the
poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where
somebody seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded and
unhealthy-looking though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who s=
at
biting the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was =
in
such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which we=
re
disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she
really seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that
was in its proper condition or its right place.
‘You find me, my dears,’ said Mrs =
Jellyby,
snuffing the two great office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the r=
oom
taste strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing =
in
the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), ‘you find me, my
dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at
present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public
bodies and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species
all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this ti=
me
next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families
cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left
bank of the Niger.’
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said =
it
must be very gratifying.
‘It IS gratifying,’ said Mrs Jelly=
by. ‘It
involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is
nothing, so that it succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day.=
Do
you know, Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your though=
ts
to Africa.’
This application of the subject was really so
unexpected to me that I was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that
the climate--
‘The finest climate in the world!’
said Mrs Jellyby.
‘Indeed, ma'am?’
‘Certainly. With precaution,’ said=
Mrs
Jellyby. ‘You may go into Holborn, without precaution, and be run ove=
r.
You may go into Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so wi=
th
Africa.’
I said, ‘No doubt.’ I meant as to
Holborn.
‘If you would like,’ said Mrs Jell=
yby,
putting a number of papers towards us, ‘to look over some remarks on =
that
head, and on the general subject, which have been extensively circulated, w=
hile
I finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my amanu=
ensis--’
The girl at the table left off biting her pen =
and
made a return to our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
‘--I shall then have finished for the
present,’ proceeded Mrs Jellyby with a sweet smile, ‘though my =
work
is never done. Where are you, Caddy?’
‘'Presents her compliments to Mr Swallow,
and begs--'‘ said Caddy.
‘'And begs,'‘ said Mrs Jellyby,
dictating, ‘'to inform him, in reference to his letter of inquiry on =
the
African project--' No, Peepy! Not on my account!’
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child
who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presen=
ting
himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded kn=
ees,
in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most-- the bruises or the dir=
t. Mrs
Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everyth=
ing,
‘Go along, you naughty Peepy!’ and fixed her fine eyes on Africa
again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her
dictation, and as I interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to =
stop
poor Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very =
much
astonished at it and at Ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast asleep in my
arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so
occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I derived such=
a
general impression from it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the u=
tter
insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to
have thought so little about it.
‘Six o'clock!’ said Mrs Jellyby. &=
#8216;And
our dinner hour is nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show M=
iss
Clare and Miss Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change,
perhaps? You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very =
bad
child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!’
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying
that he was not at all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him o=
n my
bed. Ada and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. Th=
ey
were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fast=
ened
up with a fork.
‘You would like some hot water, wouldn't
you?’ said Miss Jellyby, looking round for a jug with a handle to it,=
but
looking in vain.
‘If it is not being troublesome,’ =
said
we.
‘Oh, it's not the trouble,’ return=
ed
Miss Jellyby; ‘the question is, if there IS any.’
The evening was so very cold and the rooms had
such a marshy smell that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada =
was
half crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss
Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water, but they
couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it and made all t=
he
haste we could to get down to the fire again. But all the little children h=
ad
come up to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on =
my
bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of noses a=
nd
fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the doors. It was
impossible to shut the door of either room, for my lock, with no knob to it,
looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and though the handle of Ada's went
round and round with the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no effect
whatever on the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they should
come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Li=
ttle
Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as mice,
including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug with =
8216;A
Present from Tunbridge Wells’ on it lighted up in the staircase window
with a floating wick, and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a
flannel bandage blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an o=
pen
door with Mrs Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that deg=
ree,
in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for hal=
f an
hour, during which Mrs Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed
letters about Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief=
to
me, for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that
they had found the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so t=
hat
they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinne=
r,
carefully, by Mrs Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being ve=
ry
deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fi=
ne
cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excel=
lent
dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. The y=
oung
woman with the flannel bandage waited, and dropped everything on the table
wherever it happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it on the
stairs. The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have been the co=
ok,
frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to =
be
ill will between them.
All through dinner--which was long, in consequ=
ence
of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle=
and
the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in the
chin--Mrs Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She told us a
great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and
received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in
the gravy at once. Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committe=
es
or resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were
applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of
coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest
daughter from the table three or four times to write. She was full of busin=
ess
and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
I was a little curious to know who a mild bald
gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no =
top
or bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed passively=
to
submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively interested in that
settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might have been a native but for h=
is
complexion. It was not until we left the table and he remained alone with
Richard that the possibility of his being Mr Jellyby ever entered my head. =
But
he WAS Mr Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr Quale, with large
shining knobs for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head,=
who
came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also informed her
that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs Jellyby with Mr Jellyby the
union of mind and matter.
This young man, besides having a great deal to=
say
for himself about Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colon=
ists
to teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade,
delighted in drawing Mrs Jellyby out by saving, ‘I believe now, Mrs
Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and fifty to two hun=
dred
letters respecting Africa in a single day, have you not?’ or, ‘=
If
my memory does not deceive me, Mrs Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had
sent off five thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?’--=
always
repeating Mrs Jellyby's answer to us like an interpreter. During the whole
evening, Mr Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall as if he
were subject to low spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his
mouth when alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his m=
ind,
but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without saying
anything.
Mrs Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste
paper, drank coffee all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest
daughter. She also held a discussion with Mr Quale, of which the subject se=
emed
to be--if I understood it--the brotherhood of humanity, and gave utterance =
to
some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an auditor as I might hav=
e wished
to be, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada an=
d me
in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down am=
ong
them and told them in whispers ‘Puss in Boots’ and I don't know
what else until Mrs Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to be=
d.
As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the
young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little
family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
After that I occupied myself in making our roo=
m a
little tidy and in coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn,
which at last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that =
Mrs
Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I was sorry =
for
it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher pretensions.
It was nearly
‘What a strange house!’ said Ada w=
hen
we got upstairs. ‘How curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!&=
#8217;
‘My love,’ said I, ‘it quite
confuses me. I want to understand it, and I can't understand it at all.R=
17;
‘What?’ asked Ada with her pretty
smile.
‘All this, my dear,’ said I. ̵=
6;It
MUST be very good of Mrs Jellyby to take such pains about a scheme for the
benefit of natives--and yet--Peepy and the housekeeping!’
Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I
stood looking at the fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature a=
nd
had won her heart. ‘You are so thoughtful, Esther,’ she said, &=
#8216;and
yet so cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a ho=
me
out of even this house.’
My simple darling! She was quite unconscious t=
hat
she only praised herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart t=
hat
she made so much of me!
‘May I ask you a question?’ said I
when we had sat before the fire a little while.
‘Five hundred,’ said Ada.
‘Your cousin, Mr Jarndyce. I owe so much=
to
him. Would you mind describing him to me?’
Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes u=
pon
me with such laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her
beauty, partly at her surprise.
‘Esther!’ she cried.
‘My dear!’
‘You want a description of my cousin
Jarndyce?’
‘My dear, I never saw him.’
‘And I never saw him!’ returned Ad=
a.
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was w=
hen
her mama died, she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when s=
he
spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had sa=
id
was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her cousin
Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago--’a plain, honest letter=
,’
Ada said--proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on and telling her
that ‘in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable
Chancery suit.’ She had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal.
Richard had received a similar letter and had made a similar response. He H=
AD
seen Mr Jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at Winchester school.=
He
had told Ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I
found them, that he recollected him as ‘a bluff, rosy fellow.’ =
This
was the utmost description Ada could give me.
It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep=
, I
still remained before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, =
and
wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long ago. I d=
on't
know where my thoughts had wandered when they were recalled by a tap at the
door.
I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby
shivering there with a broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand an=
d an
egg-cup in the other.
‘Good night!’ she said very sulkil=
y.
‘Good night!’ said I.
‘May I come in?’ she shortly and
unexpectedly asked me in the same sulky way.
‘Certainly,’ said I. ‘Don't =
wake
Miss Clare.’
She would not sit down, but stood by the fire
dipping her inky middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and
smearing it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and
looking very gloomy.
‘I wish Africa was dead!’ she said=
on
a sudden.
I was going to remonstrate.
‘I do!’ she said ‘Don't talk=
to
me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and detest it. It's a beast!’
I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I p=
ut
my hand upon her head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but
would be cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but
presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed where Ada =
lay.
‘She is very pretty!’ she said with
the same knitted brow and in the same uncivil manner.
I assented with a smile.
‘An orphan. Ain't she?’
‘Yes.’
‘But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can da=
nce,
and play music, and sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography,=
and
globes, and needlework, and everything?’
‘No doubt,’ said I.
‘I can't,’ she returned. ‘I
can't do anything hardly, except write. I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder=
you
two were not ashamed of yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me abl=
e to
do nothing else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very
fine, I dare say!’
I could see that the poor girl was near crying,
and I resumed my chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildl=
y as
I felt towards her.
‘It's disgraceful,’ she said. R=
16;You
know it is. The whole house is disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I=
'M
disgraceful. Pa's miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks--she's always
drinking. It's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't
smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you k=
now
it was!’
‘My dear, I don't know it,’ said I=
.
‘You do,’ she said very shortly. &=
#8216;You
shan't say you don't. You do!’
‘Oh, my dear!’ said I. ‘If y=
ou
won't let me speak--’
‘You're speaking now. You know you are.
Don't tell stories, Miss Summerson.’
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘as long =
as
you won't hear me out--’
‘I don't want to hear you out.’
‘Oh, yes, I think you do,’ said I,=
‘because
that would be so very unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because=
the
servant did not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me,=
and
I am sorry to hear it.’
‘You needn't make a merit of that,’
said she.
‘No, my dear,’ said I. ‘That
would be very foolish.’
She was still standing by the bed, and now sto=
oped
down (but still with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done,=
she
came softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving i=
n a
distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it better not to sp=
eak.
‘I wish I was dead!’ she broke out=
. ‘I
wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us.’
In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the groun=
d at
my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept.=
I
comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she wanted to
stay there!
‘You used to teach girls,’ she sai=
d, ‘If
you could only have taught me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very
miserable, and I like you so much!’
I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do
anything but move a ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, =
and
still hold my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell
asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest on my
lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long
she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I was painfully awake and
vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the d=
ay.
At length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. I began to =
lose
the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old
Reading friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now=
it
was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now some one =
in
authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I was no one.
The purblind day was feebly struggling with the
fog when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre
fixed upon me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and
cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them a=
ll.
Although the morning was raw, and although the=
fog
still seemed heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with di=
rt
that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was sufficiently forewa=
rned
of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and sufficiently curious
about London to think it a good idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she
proposed that we should go out for a walk.
‘Ma won't be down for ever so long,̵=
7;
she said, ‘and then it's a chance if breakfast's ready for an hour
afterwards, they dawdle so. As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the
office. He never has what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla lea=
ves
him out the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes the=
re
isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you must be
tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to bed.’
‘I am not at all tired, my dear,’ =
said
I, ‘and would much prefer to go out.’
‘If you're sure you would,’ return=
ed
Miss Jellyby, ‘I'll get my things on.’
Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir.=
I
made a proposal to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for
him, that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed
again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at me dur=
ing
the whole operation as if he never had been, and never could again be, so
astonished in his life--looking very miserable also, certainly, but making =
no
complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. At first I was=
in
two minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in =
the
house was likely to notice it.
What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and =
the
bustle of getting myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow.=
We
found Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing- room,
which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick, throwi=
ng
the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as we had left it
last night and was evidently intended to remain so. Below-stairs the
dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast.
Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over the house. Some pewter pots and=
a
milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook
round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentio=
ned,
as she passed us, that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who
was dancing up and down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably
surprised to see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our wal=
k.
So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention th=
at
Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I really should not
have thought she liked me much unless she had told me so.
‘Where would you wish to go?’ she
asked.
‘Anywhere, my dear,’ I replied.
‘Anywhere's nowhere,’ said Miss
Jellyby, stopping perversely.
‘Let us go somewhere at any rate,’
said I.
She then walked me on very fast.
‘I don't care!’ she said. ‘N=
ow,
you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don't care--but if he was to co=
me
to our house with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till=
he
was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such ASSE=
S as
he and Ma make of themselves!’
‘My dear!’ I remonstrated, in allu=
sion
to the epithet and the vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. ‘Y=
our
duty as a child--’
‘Oh! Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss
Summerson; where's Ma's duty as a parent? All made over to the public and
Africa, I suppose! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's
much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, s=
o am
I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!’
She walked me on faster yet.
‘But for all that, I say again, he may c=
ome,
and come, and come, and I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear h=
im.
If there's any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he=
and
Ma talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the
patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and
contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!’
I could not but understand her to refer to Mr
Quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was s=
aved
the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada comin=
g up
at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run a race. Thus
interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked moodily on at my side wh=
ile
I admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of pe=
ople
already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the
busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out=
of
shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly groping among the s=
wept-out
rubbish for pins and other refuse.
‘So, cousin,’ said the cheerful vo=
ice
of Richard to Ada behind me. ‘We are never to get out of Chancery! We
have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Gre=
at
Seal, here's the old lady again!’
Truly, there she was, immediately in front of =
us,
curtsying, and smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, &=
#8216;The
wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!’
‘You are out early, ma'am,’ said I=
as
she curtsied to me.
‘Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before
the court sits. It's retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of
the day,’ said the old lady mincingly. ‘The business of the day
requires a great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to
follow.’
‘Who's this, Miss Summerson?’
whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm tighter through her own.
The little old lady's hearing was remarkably
quick. She answered for herself directly.
‘A suitor, my child. At your service. I =
have
the honour to attend court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasur=
e of
addressing another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?’ said the old
lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low curtsy=
.
Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessn=
ess
of yesterday, good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected =
with
the suit.
‘Ha!’ said the old lady. ‘She
does not expect a judgment? She will still grow old. But not so old. Oh, de=
ar,
no! This is the garden of Lincoln's Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a
bower in the summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the grea=
ter
part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long vacation
exceedingly long, don't you?’
We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say=
so.
‘When the leaves are falling from the tr=
ees
and there are no more flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord
Chancellor's court,’ said the old lady, ‘the vacation is fulfil=
led
and the sixth seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come=
and
see my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty =
are
very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a visit from either.=
’
She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss
Jellyby away, beckoned Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to
excuse myself and looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half
curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she
continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our strange
conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling condescension, that
she lived close by.
It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She li=
ved
so close by that we had not time to have done humouring her for a few momen=
ts
before she was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady
stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and
lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, ‘This is my
lodging. Pray walk up!’
She had stopped at a shop over which was writt=
en
KROOK, RAG
As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop
was blinded besides by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light wi=
thin
a couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern
that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the sho=
p.
Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was short, cadavero=
us,
and withered, with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders and the bre=
ath
issuing in visible smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within. His
throat, chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs and so gnarled =
with
veins and puckered skin that he looked from his breast upward like some old
root in a fall of snow.
‘Hi, hi!’ said the old man, coming=
to
the door. ‘Have you anything to sell?’
We naturally drew back and glanced at our
conductress, who had been trying to open the house-door with a key she had
taken from her pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the
pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for t=
ime.
But she was not to be so easily left. She became so fantastically and press=
ingly
earnest in her entreaties that we would walk up and see her apartment for an
instant, and was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of=
the
good omen she desired, that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing fo=
r it
but to comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when
the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, ‘Aye, aye! Please
her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the shop if
t'other door's out of order!’ we all went in, stimulated by Richard's
laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.
‘My landlord, Krook,’ said the lit=
tle
old lady, condescending to him from her lofty station as she presented him =
to
us. ‘He is called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop =
is
called the Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd.
Oh, I assure you he is very odd!’
She shook her head a great many times and tapp=
ed
her forehead with her finger to express to us that we must have the goodnes=
s to
excuse him, ‘For he is a little--you know--M!’ said the old lady
with great stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
‘It's true enough,’ he said, going
before us with the lantern, ‘that they call me the Lord Chancellor and
call my shop Chancery. And why do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor
and my shop Chancery?’
‘I don't know, I am sure!’ said
Richard rather carelessly.
‘You see,’ said the old man, stopp=
ing
and turning round, ‘they--Hi! Here's lovely hair! I have got three sa=
cks
of ladies' hair below, but none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour,=
and
what texture!’
‘That'll do, my good friend!’ said
Richard, strongly disapproving of his having drawn one of Ada's tresses thr=
ough
his yellow hand. ‘You can admire as the rest of us do without taking =
that
liberty.’
The old man darted at him a sudden look which =
even
called my attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably
beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the little old =
lady
herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said she could only feel prou=
d of
such genuine admiration, Mr Krook shrunk into his former self as suddenly a=
s he
had leaped out of it.
‘You see, I have so many things here,=
217;
he resumed, holding up the lantern, ‘of so many kinds, and all as the=
neighbours
think (but THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that
that's why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many
old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and m=
ust
and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I can't abear to part
with anything I once lay hold of (or so my neighbours think, but what do TH=
EY
know?) or to alter anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor
cleaning, nor repairing going on about me. That's the way I've got the ill =
name
of Chancery. I don't mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty =
well
every day, when he sits in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice him.
There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi, Lady Jan=
e!’
A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring
shelf on his shoulder and startled us all.
‘Hi! Show 'em how you scratch. Hi! Tear,=
my
lady!’ said her master.
The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of =
rags
with her tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.=
‘She'd do as much for any one I was to s=
et
her on,’ said the old man. ‘I deal in cat-skins among other gen=
eral
matters, and hers was offered to me. It's a very fine skin, as you may see,=
but
I didn't have it stripped off! THAT warn't like Chancery practice though, s=
ays
you!’
He had by this time led us across the shop, and
now opened a door in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he
stood with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed =
to
him before passing out, ‘That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are
tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare mysel=
f,
having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the wards in Jarndyc=
e.’
‘Jarndyce!’ said the old man with a
start.
‘Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit,
Krook,’ returned his lodger.
‘Hi!’ exclaimed the old man in a t=
one
of thoughtful amazement and with a wider stare than before. ‘Think of=
it!’
He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so
curiously at us that Richard said, ‘Why, you appear to trouble yourse=
lf a
good deal about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other
Chancellor!’
‘Yes,’ said the old man abstracted=
ly. ‘Sure!
YOUR name now will be--’
‘Richard Carstone.’
‘Carstone,’ he repeated, slowly
checking off that name upon his forefinger; and each of the others he went =
on
to mention upon a separate finger. ‘Yes. There was the name of Barbar=
y,
and the name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think.’
‘He knows as much of the cause as the re= al salaried Chancellor!’ said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.<= o:p>
‘Aye!’ said the old man, coming sl=
owly
out of his abstraction. ‘Yes! Tom Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being
related; but he was never known about court by any other name, and was as w=
ell
known there as--she is now,’ nodding slightly at his lodger. ‘T=
om
Jarndyce was often in here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about
when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and
telling 'em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it=
's
being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's
being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going
mad by grains.' He was as near making away with himself, just where the you=
ng
lady stands, as near could be.’
We listened with horror.
‘He come in at the door,’ said the=
old
man, slowly pointing an imaginary track along the shop, ‘on the day he
did it--the whole neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do=
it,
of a certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and walked
along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and asked me (you=
'll
judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch him a pint of wine. 'For,'
says he, 'Krook, I am much depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I'm
nearer judgment than I ever was.' I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I
persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane =
(I
mean Chancery Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw hi=
m,
comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company with hi=
m. I
hadn't hardly got back here when I heard a shot go echoing and rattling rig=
ht
away into the inn. I ran out--neighbours ran out--twenty of us cried at onc=
e,
'Tom Jarndyce!'‘
The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked
down into the lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
‘We were right, I needn't tell the prese=
nt
hearers. Hi! To be sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that after=
noon
while the cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest =
of
'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they hadn't
heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they had--Oh, dear
me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of it by any chance!=
217;
Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard
was scarcely less pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, =
and
I was no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a sh=
ock
to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds =
of
many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another uneasiness, in =
the
application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature who had
brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of =
that
and only led the way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a
superior creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord =
was ‘a
little M, you know!’
She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty
large room, from which she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed=
to
have been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence
there. She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the
moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the scantiest
necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of
Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some half-dozen
reticles and work-bags, ‘containing documents,’ as she informed=
us.
There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of
clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a shelf in an open cupboard w=
ere
a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and empty. There wa=
s a
more affecting meaning in her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked rou=
nd,
than I had understood before.
‘Extremely honoured, I am sure,’ s=
aid
our poor hostess with the greatest suavity, ‘by this visit from the w=
ards
in Jarndyce. And very much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation.
Considering. I am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity =
of
attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my days in
court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep =
but
little and think much. That is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery. =
I am
sorry I cannot offer chocolate. I expect a judgment shortly and shall then
place my establishment on a superior footing. At present, I don't mind
confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes
find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold her=
e. I
have felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse =
the introduction
of such mean topics.’
She partly drew aside the curtain of the long,=
low
garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging th=
ere,
some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches--I
should think at least twenty.
‘I began to keep the little creatures,=
8217;
she said, ‘with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With
the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be give=
n.
Ye- es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so
short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole
collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one =
of
these, though they are all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, i=
s it
not?’
Although she sometimes asked a question, she n=
ever
seemed to expect a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doi=
ng
so when no one but herself was present.
‘Indeed,’ she pursued, ‘I
positively doubt sometimes, I do assure you, whether while matters are still
unsettled, and the sixth or Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be
found lying stark and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!’=
Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's
compassionate eyes, took the opportunity of laying some money, softly and
unobserved, on the chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning=
to
examine the birds.
‘I can't allow them to sing much,’
said the little old lady, ‘for (you'll think this curious) I find my =
mind
confused by the idea that they are singing while I am following the argumen=
ts
in court. And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time,
I'll tell you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they
shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,’ a smile and cur=
tsy,
‘hope,’ a smile and curtsy, ‘and beauty,’ a smile a=
nd
curtsy. ‘There! We'll let in the full light.’
The birds began to stir and chirp.
‘I cannot admit the air freely,’ s=
aid
the little old lady--the room was close, and would have been the better for
it--’because the cat you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy =
for
their lives. She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have
discovered,’ whispering mysteriously, ‘that her natural cruelty=
is
sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In consequenc=
e of
the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly and full of malice. I
half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying=
. It
is so very difficult to keep her from the door.’
Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor so=
ul
that it was half- past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our vis=
it
to an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly took =
up
her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the table on coming in,
and asked if we were also going into court. On our answering no, and that we
would on no account detain her, she opened the door to attend us downstairs=
.
‘With such an omen, it is even more
necessary than usual that I should be there before the Chancellor comes in,=
’
said she, ‘for he might mention my case the first thing. I have a
presentiment that he WILL mention it the first thing this morning.’
She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were
going down that the whole house was filled with strange lumber which her
landlord had bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of be=
ing
a little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous stoppa=
ge
on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door there.
‘The only other lodger,’ she now
whispered in explanation, ‘a law- writer. The children in the lanes h=
ere
say he has sold himself to the devil. I don't know what he can have done wi=
th
the money. Hush!’
She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might
hear her even there, and repeating ‘Hush!’ went before us on ti=
ptoe
as though even the sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had
said.
Passing through the shop on our way out, as we=
had
passed through it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of
packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be work=
ing
hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece of ch=
alk
by him, with which, as he put each separate package or bundle down, he made=
a
crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.
Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the lit=
tle
old lady had gone by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to =
stay
me, and chalked the letter J upon the wall--in a very curious manner, begin=
ning
with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was a capital letter,
not a printed one, but just such a letter as any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and
Carboy's office would have made.
‘Can you read it?’ he asked me wit=
h a
keen glance.
‘Surely,’ said I. ‘It's very
plain.’
‘What is it?’
‘J.’
With another glance at me, and a glance at the
door, he rubbed it out and turned an ‘a’ in its place (not a
capital letter this time), and said, ‘What's that?’
I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned=
the
letter ‘r,’ and asked me the same question. He went on quickly
until he had formed in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and
bottoms of the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters=
on
the wall together.
‘What does that spell?’ he asked m=
e.
When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd w=
ay,
yet with the same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly,=
the
letters forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also
read; and he laughed again.
‘Hi!’ said the old man, laying asi=
de
the chalk. ‘I have a turn for copying from memory, you see, miss, tho=
ugh
I can neither read nor write.’
He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so
wickedly at me, as if I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I=
was
quite relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, ‘Miss
Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair. Don't be
tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr Krook!’
I lost no time in wishing Mr Krook good morning
and joining my friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, w=
ho
gave us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of yeste=
rday
in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada and me. Before we
finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back and saw Mr Krook standing=
at
his shop-door, in his spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his
shoulder, and her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall
feather.
‘Quite an adventure for a morning in Lon=
don!’
said Richard with a sigh. ‘Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this
Chancery!’
‘It is to me, and has been ever since I =
can
remember,’ returned Ada. ‘I am grieved that I should be the
enemy--as I suppose I am --of a great number of relations and others, and t=
hat
they should be my enemies--as I suppose they are--and that we should all be
ruining one another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and
discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right somewh=
ere,
that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to find out through =
all
these years where it is.’
‘Ah, cousin!’ said Richard. ‘=
;Strange,
indeed! All this wasteful, wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that
composed court yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the
wretchedness of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the hearta=
che
both together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were
neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could possibly =
be
either. But at all events, Ada--I may call you Ada?’
‘Of course you may, cousin Richard.̵=
7;
‘At all events, Chancery will work none =
of
its bad influences on US. We have happily been brought together, thanks to =
our
good kinsman, and it can't divide us now!’
‘Never, I hope, cousin Richard!’ s=
aid
Ada gently.
Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a ve=
ry
significant look. I smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back =
very
pleasantly.
In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs Jellyby
appeared; and in the course of an hour the various things necessary for
breakfast straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs
Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she presented no
appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly occupied during
breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy correspondence relative to
Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day. The
children tumbled about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their l=
egs,
which were perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an =
hour
and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The equable
manner in which Mrs Jellyby sustained both his absence and his restoration =
to
the family circle surprised us all.
She was by that time perseveringly dictating to
Caddy, and Caddy was fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had
found her. At one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for o=
ur
luggage. Mrs Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good friend Mr
Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me in the passage, a=
nd
stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps; Peepy, I am happy to say, was
asleep and spared the pain of separation (I was not without misgivings that=
he
had gone to Newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got=
up
behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern,
scattered over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts=
.
The day had brightened very much, and still
brightened as we went westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the
fresh air, wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilli=
ancy
of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the pleasant=
er
weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured flowers. By and by we
began to leave the wonderful city and to proceed through suburbs which, of
themselves, would have made a pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we =
got
into a real country road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones,
farmers' waggons, scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: tre=
es,
fields, and hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before=
us
and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train of beauti=
ful
horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us w=
ith
its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful
were the influences around.
‘The whole road has been reminding me of=
my
namesake Whittington,’ said Richard, ‘and that waggon is the
finishing touch. Halloa! What's the matter?’
We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too.
Its music changed as the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle t=
inkling,
except when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a li=
ttle
shower of bell-ringing.
‘Our postilion is looking after the
waggoner,’ said Richard, ‘and the waggoner is coming back after=
us.
Good day, friend!’ The waggoner was at our coach-door. ‘Why, he=
re's
an extraordinary thing!’ added Richard, looking closely at the man. &=
#8216;He
has got your name, Ada, in his hat!’
He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within=
the
band were three small notes--one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to m=
e.
These the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name a=
loud
first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he briefly answe=
red,
‘Master, sir, if you please’; and putting on his hat again (whi=
ch
was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened his music, and went
melodiously away.
‘Is that Mr Jarndyce's waggon?’ sa=
id
Richard, calling to our post- boy.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘Goi=
ng
to London.’
We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of=
the
other and contained these words in a solid, plain hand.
‘I look forward, my dear, to our meeting
easily and without constraint on either side. I therefore have to propose t=
hat
we meet as old friends and take the past for granted. It will be a relief to
you possibly, and to me certainly, and so my love to you.
‘John Jarndyce’
I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than
either of my companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking
one who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many =
years.
I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude lying too deep in =
my
heart for that; but I now began to consider how I could meet him without
thanking him, and felt it would be very difficult indeed.
The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general
impression that they both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, t=
hat
their cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he
performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the most sing=
ular
expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada dimly remembered to have
heard her mother tell, when she was a very little child, that he had once d=
one
her an act of uncommon generosity and that on her going to his house to tha=
nk
him, he happened to see her through a window coming to the door, and
immediately escaped by the back gate, and was not heard of for three months.
This discourse led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it la=
sted
us all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any chance
diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and wondered what t=
he
house would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should se=
e Mr
Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after a delay, and what he would say to u=
s,
and what we should say to him. All of which we wondered about, over and over
again.
The roads were very heavy for the horses, but = the pathway was generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got= to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as they had = only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old battle- field before the carriage came up. These delays s= o protracted the journey that the short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.<= o:p>
By that time we were so anxious and nervous th=
at
even Richard confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to
feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me, whom he=
had
wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and frosty, we trembled f=
rom
head to foot. When we turned out of the town, round a corner, and Richard t=
old
us that the post-boy, who had for a long time sympathized with our heighten=
ed
expectation, was looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage
(Richard holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon t=
he
open country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a light
sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver, pointing to it wi=
th
his whip and crying, ‘That's Bleak House!’ put his horses into a
canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill though it was, that the
wheels sent the road drift flying about our heads like spray from a water-m=
ill.
Presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost it, presently=
saw
it, and turned into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was
beaming brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned
house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep leading to=
the
porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the sound of its deep voic=
e in
the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of light fr=
om
the opened door, and the smoking and steaming of the heated horses, and the
quickened beating of our own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable
confusion.
‘Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are =
welcome.
I rejoice to see you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would gi=
ve
it you!’
The gentleman who said these words in a clear,
bright, hospitable voice had one of his arms round Ada's waist and the other
round mine, and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the ha=
ll
into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he kissed=
us
again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side on a sofa ready
drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been at all demonstrative,=
he
would have run away in a moment.
‘Now, Rick!’ said he. ‘I hav=
e a
hand at liberty. A word in earnest is as good as a speech. I am heartily gl=
ad
to see you. You are at home. Warm yourself!’
Richard shook him by both hands with an intuit=
ive mixture
of respect and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that
rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr Jarndyce's suddenly disappearing),=
‘You
are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to you!’ laid aside his =
hat
and coat and came up to the fire.
‘And how did you like the ride? And how =
did
you like Mrs Jellyby, my dear?’ said Mr Jarndyce to Ada.
While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glan=
ced
(I need not say with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, liv=
ely,
quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-gre=
y. I
took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and rob=
ust.
From the moment of his first speaking to us his voice had connected itself =
with
an association in my mind that I could not define; but now, all at once, a
something sudden in his manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recall=
ed
the gentleman in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my
journey to Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my
life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and appearing to
read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I thought we had lost h=
im.
However, I am happy to say he remained where he
was, and asked me what I thought of Mrs Jellyby.
‘She exerts herself very much for Africa,
sir,’ I said.
‘Nobly!’ returned Mr Jarndyce. =
216;But
you answer like Ada.’ Whom I had not heard. ‘You all think
something else, I see.’
‘We rather thought,’ said I, glanc=
ing
at Richard and Ada, who entreated me with their eyes to speak, ‘that
perhaps she was a little unmindful of her home.’
‘Floored!’ cried Mr Jarndyce.
I was rather alarmed again.
‘Well! I want to know your real thoughts=
, my
dear. I may have sent you there on purpose.’
‘We thought that, perhaps,’ said I,
hesitating, ‘it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; =
and
that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can
possibly be substituted for them.’
‘The little Jellybys,’ said Richar=
d,
coming to my relief, ‘are really--I can't help expressing myself
strongly, sir--in a devil of a state.’
‘She means well,’ said Mr Jarndyce
hastily. ‘The wind's in the east.’
‘It was in the north, sir, as we came do=
wn,’
observed Richard.
‘My dear Rick,’ said Mr Jarndyce,
poking the fire, ‘I'll take an oath it's either in the east or going =
to
be. I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when t=
he
wind is blowing in the east.’
‘Rheumatism, sir?’ said Richard.
‘I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is.
And so the little Jell --I had my doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, Lord, yes,
it's easterly!’ said Mr Jarndyce.
He had taken two or three undecided turns up a=
nd
down while uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand=
and
rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so
whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with him tha=
n we
could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an arm to Ada and an ar=
m to
me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was leading the way out when he
suddenly turned us all back again.
‘Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you--di=
dn't
you--now, if it had rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, =
or
anything of that sort!’ said Mr Jarndyce.
‘Oh, cousin--’ Ada hastily began.<= o:p>
‘Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cou=
sin
John, perhaps, is better.’
‘Then, cousin John--’ Ada laughing=
ly
began again.
‘Ha, ha! Very good indeed!’ said Mr
Jarndyce with great enjoyment. ‘Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my de=
ar?’
‘It did better than that. It rained Esth=
er.’
‘Aye?’ said Mr Jarndyce. ‘Wh=
at
did Esther do?’
‘Why, cousin John,’ said Ada, clas=
ping
her hands upon his arm and shaking her head at me across him--for I wanted =
her
to be quiet-- ‘Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them,
coaxed them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them
quiet, bought them keepsakes’--My dear girl! I had only gone out with
Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!-- ‘and,
cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and was so
thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won't be contradicted, Esther d=
ear!
You know, you know, it's true!’
The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cou=
sin
John and kissed me, and then looking up in his face, boldly said, ‘At=
all
events, cousin John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me.&=
#8217;
I felt as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.
‘Where did you say the wind was, Rick?=
8217;
asked Mr Jarndyce.
‘In the north as we came down, sir.̵=
7;
‘You are right. There's no east in it. A
mistake of mine. Come, girls, come and see your home!’
It was one of those delightfully irregular hou=
ses
where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you =
come
upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there=
is
a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find still
older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice windows and green gro=
wth
pressing through them. Mine, which we entered first, was of this kind, with=
an
up-and-down roof that had more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards=
and
a chimney (there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure
white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was blazi=
ng.
Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming little sitting-ro=
om
looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was henceforth to belong to A=
da
and me. Out of this you went up three steps into Ada's bedroom, which had a
fine broad window commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of
darkness lying underneath the stars), to which there was a hollow window-se=
at,
in which, with a spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once.=
Out
of this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best ro=
oms
(only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps wit=
h a
number of corner stairs in it, considering its length, down into the hall. =
But
if instead of going out at Ada's door you came back into my room, and went =
out
at the door by which you had entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps =
that
branched off in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in
passages, with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hin=
du
chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every fo=
rm
something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had been bro=
ught
from India nobody knew by whom or when. From these you came on Richard's ro=
om,
which was part library, part sitting- room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed=
a
comfortable compound of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a
little interval of passage, to the plain room where Mr Jarndyce slept, all =
the
year round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture standi=
ng
in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath gaping for him i=
n a
smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into another passage, where th=
ere
were back-stairs and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outs=
ide
the stable and being told to ‘Hold up’ and ‘Get over,R=
17;
as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you =
came
out at another door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to
the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you g=
ot
back there or had ever got out of it.
The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, =
like
the house, was as pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers=
--in
chintz and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff cou=
rtly
chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for greater
state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room was green and had
framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of surprising and surprised birds,
staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as =
if
it had been served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the who=
le
process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my ro=
om
there were oval engravings of the months--ladies haymaking in short waists =
and
large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged noblemen pointing w=
ith
cocked-hats to village steeples, for October. Half-length portraits in cray=
ons
abounded all through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the brot=
her
of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my
pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As
substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a complacent
gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in
needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables,
from the wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the
pincushions and scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the same qu=
aint
variety. They agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of
the whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a dra=
wer,
small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of rose-leaves and sweet
lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows, softened here and there by
shadows of curtains, shining out upon the starlight night; with its light, =
and
warmth, and comfort; with its hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparat=
ions
for dinner; with the face of its generous master brightening everything we =
saw;
and just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything we
heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.
‘I am glad you like it,’ said Mr
Jarndyce when he had brought us round again to Ada's sitting-room. ‘It
makes no pretensions, but it is a comfortable little place, I hope, and wil=
l be
more so with such bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour be=
fore
dinner. There's no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a child.=
217;
‘More children, Esther!’ said Ada.=
‘I don't mean literally a child,’
pursued Mr Jarndyce; ‘not a child in years. He is grown up--he is at
least as old as I am--but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and=
a
fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.=
8217;
We felt that he must be very interesting.
‘He knows Mrs Jellyby,’ said Mr
Jarndyce. ‘He is a musical man, an amateur, but might have been a
professional. He is an artist too, an amateur, but might have been a
professional. He is a man of attainments and of captivating manners. He has
been unfortunate in his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and
unfortunate in his family; but he don't care--he's a child!’
‘Did you imply that he has children of h=
is
own, sir?’ inquired Richard.
‘Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a
dozen, I should think. But he has never looked after them. How could he? He
wanted somebody to look after HIM. He is a child, you know!’ said Mr =
Jarndyce.
‘And have the children looked after
themselves at all, sir?’ inquired Richard.
‘Why, just as you may suppose,’ sa=
id Mr
Jarndyce, his countenance suddenly falling. ‘It is said that the chil=
dren
of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's chil=
dren
have tumbled up somehow or other. The wind's getting round again, I am afra=
id.
I feel it rather!’
Richard observed that the situation was expose=
d on
a sharp night.
‘It IS exposed,’ said Mr Jarndyce.=
‘No
doubt that's the cause. Bleak House has an exposed sound. But you are comin=
g my
way. Come along!’
Our luggage having arrived and being all at ha=
nd,
I was dressed in a few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away
when a maid (not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not
seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it, all
labelled.
‘For you, miss, if you please,’ sa=
id
she.
‘For me?’ said I.
‘The housekeeping keys, miss.’
I showed my surprise, for she added with some
little surprise on her own part, ‘I was told to bring them as soon as=
you
was alone, miss. Miss Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?’
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘That is my n=
ame.’
‘The large bunch is the housekeeping, and
the little bunch is the cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint
to-morrow morning, I was to show you the presses and things they belong to.=
’
I said I would be ready at half-past six, and
after she was gone, stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitud=
e of
my trust. Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when=
I
showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been
insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be sure, t=
hat
it was the dear girl's kindness, but I liked to be so pleasantly cheated.
When we went downstairs, we were presented to =
Mr
Skimpole, who was standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used=
to
be, in his school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a
rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there was a
perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous a=
nd
was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was fascinating to hear him
talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr Jarndyce and having a richer
complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the
appearance in all respects of a damaged young man than a well- preserved
elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner and even in his dre=
ss
(his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckkerchief loose and flowing, as I
have seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not separate from
the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of
depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the manner or appearanc=
e of
a man who had advanced in life by the usual road of years, cares, and
experiences.
I gathered from the conversation that Mr Skimp=
ole
had been educated for the medical profession and had once lived, in his
professional capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us,
however, that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and
measures and had never known anything about them (except that they disgusted
him), he had never been able to prescribe with the requisite accuracy of de=
tail.
In fact, he said, he had no head for detail. And he told us, with great hum=
our,
that when he was wanted to bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he=
was
generally found lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making
fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last, objecting=
to
this, ‘in which,’ said Mr Skimpole, in the frankest manner, =
216;he
was perfectly right,’ the engagement terminated, and Mr Skimpole havi=
ng
(as he added with delightful gaiety) ‘nothing to live upon but love, =
fell
in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks.’ His g=
ood
friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quic=
ker
or slower succession, to several openings in life, but to no purpose, for he
must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he=
had
no idea of time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of
which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and
never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and here =
he
was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-sket=
ches
with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of socie=
ty
was to let him live. THAT wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the pap=
ers,
conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few
sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a
mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the wor=
ld, ‘Go
your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves; put p=
ens
behind your ears, wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, a=
ny
object you prefer; only--let Harold Skimpole live!’
All this and a great deal more he told us, not
only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious
candour-- speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if
Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singulari=
ties
but still had his claims too, which were the general business of the commun=
ity
and must not be slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt at all confuse=
d at
that early time in endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything=
I
had thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far f=
rom
sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was free of th=
em.
That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it
himself.
‘I covet nothing,’ said Mr Skimpol=
e in
the same light way. ‘Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend
Jarndyce's excellent house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can
sketch it and alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have
sufficient possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibil=
ity.
My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We have be=
en
mentioning Mrs Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a strong will and
immense power of business detail, who throws herself into objects with
surprising ardour! I don't regret that I have not a strong will and an imme=
nse
power of business detail to throw myself into objects with surprising ardou=
r. I
can admire her without envy. I can sympathize with the objects. I can dream=
of
them. I can lie down on the grass--in fine weather--and float along an Afri=
can
river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and
sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I were
there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but it's all I=
can
do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake, having Harold Skimpole=
, a
confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of practical
people of business habits, to let him live and admire the human family, do =
it
somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse=
!’
It was plain enough that Mr Jarndyce had not b=
een
neglectful of the adjuration. Mr Skimpole's general position there would ha=
ve
rendered it so without the addition of what he presently said.
‘It's only you, the generous creatures, =
whom
I envy,’ said Mr Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an
impersonal manner. ‘I envy you your power of doing what you do. It is
what I should revel in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I
almost feel as if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportu=
nity
of enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can
tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing
your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you by
sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexiti=
es.
Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs when it l=
eads
to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it therefore.’
Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet alwa=
ys
fully meaning what they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr
Jarndyce than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whet=
her
it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably t=
he
most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to escape
the gratitude of others.
We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tri=
bute
to the engaging qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr Skimpole, seeing them =
for
the first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be so
exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were naturally pleased,
for similar reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be so freely
confided in by such an attractive man. The more we listened, the more gaily=
Mr
Skimpole talked. And what with his fine hilarious manner and his engaging
candour and his genial way of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as =
if
he had said, ‘I am a child, you know! You are designing people compar=
ed
with me’ (he really made me consider myself in that light) ‘but=
I
am gay and innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!’ the
effect was absolutely dazzling.
He was so full of feeling too and had such a
delicate sentiment for what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a
heart by that alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and A=
da
was touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to h=
er
cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on=
the
sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.
‘She is like the morning,’ he said=
. ‘With
that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is
like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not
call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an
orphan. She is the child of the universe.’
Mr Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with
his hands behind him and an attentive smile upon his face.
‘The universe,’ he observed, ̵=
6;makes
rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.’
‘Oh! I don't know!’ cried Mr Skimp=
ole
buoyantly.
‘I think I do know,’ said Mr Jarnd=
yce.
‘Well!’ cried Mr Skimpole. ‘=
You
know the world (which in your sense is the universe), and I know nothing of=
it,
so you shall have your way. But if I had mine,’ glancing at the cousi=
ns, ‘there
should be no brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should=
be
strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring,
autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change should never wither=
it.
The base word money should never be breathed near it!’
Mr Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smil=
e,
as if he had been really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stoppin=
g a
moment, glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a
benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again, which has =
long
been engraven on my heart. The room in which they were, communicating with =
that
in which he stood, was only lighted by the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Rich=
ard
stood beside her, bending down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended togeth=
er,
surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the u=
nsteady
fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the notes so
softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the distant hills, wa=
s as
audible as the music. The mystery of the future and the little clue afforde=
d to
it by the voice of the present seemed expressed in the whole picture.
But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I
remember it, that I recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of=
the
contrast in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look direct=
ed
that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though Mr
Jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on me, I felt a=
s if
in that moment he confided to me-- and knew that he confided to me and that=
I
received the confidence --his hope that Ada and Richard might one day enter=
on
a dearer relationship.
Mr Skimpole could play on the piano and the
violoncello, and he was a composer--had composed half an opera once, but got
tired of it--and played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite=
a
little concert, in which Richard--who was enthralled by Ada's singing and t=
old
me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were written--and Mr
Jarndyce, and I were the audience. After a little while I missed first Mr
Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and while I was thinking how could Richard
stay away so long and lose so much, the maid who had given me the keys look=
ed
in at the door, saying, ‘If you please, miss, could you spare a minut=
e?’
When I was shut out with her in the hall, she
said, holding up her hands, ‘Oh, if you please, miss, Mr Carstone says
would you come upstairs to Mr Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!̵=
7;
‘Took?’ said I.
‘Took, miss. Sudden,’ said the mai=
d.
I was apprehensive that his illness might be o=
f a
dangerous kind, but of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any =
one
and collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to
consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to be=
a
fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where, to my unspeaka=
ble
surprise, instead of finding Mr Skimpole stretched upon the bed or prostrat=
e on
the floor, I found him standing before the fire smiling at Richard, while
Richard, with a face of great embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa=
, in
a white great-coat, with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, whic=
h he
was wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.
‘Miss Summerson,’ said Richard
hurriedly, ‘I am glad you are come. You will be able to advise us. Our
friend Mr Skimpole--don't be alarmed!--is arrested for debt.’
‘And really, my dear Miss Summerson,R=
17;
said Mr Skimpole with his agreeable candour, ‘I never was in a situat=
ion
in which that excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, whi=
ch
anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter of an =
hour
in your society, was more needed.’
The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a
cold in his head, gave such a very loud snort that he startled me.
‘Are you arrested for much, sir?’ I
inquired of Mr Skimpole.
‘My dear Miss Summerson,’ said he,
shaking his head pleasantly, ‘I don't know. Some pounds, odd shilling=
s,
and halfpence, I think, were mentioned.’
‘It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and
sevenpence ha'penny,’ observed the stranger. ‘That's wot it is.=
’
‘And it sounds--somehow it sounds,’
said Mr Skimpole, ‘like a small sum?’
The strange man said nothing but made another
snort. It was such a powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of h=
is
seat.
‘Mr Skimpole,’ said Richard to me,=
‘has
a delicacy in applying to my cousin Jarndyce because he has lately--I think,
sir, I understood you that you had lately--’
‘Oh, yes!’ returned Mr Skimpole,
smiling. ‘Though I forgot how much it was and when it was. Jarndyce w=
ould
readily do it again, but I have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefe=
r a
novelty in help, that I would rather,’ and he looked at Richard and m=
e, ‘develop
generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower.’
‘What do you think will be best, Miss
Summerson?’ said Richard, aside.
I ventured to inquire, generally, before reply=
ing,
what would happen if the money were not produced.
‘Jail,’ said the strange man, cool=
ly
putting his handkerchief into his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. =
‘Or
Coavinses.’
‘May I ask, sir, what is--’
‘Coavinses?’ said the strange man.=
‘A
'ouse.’
Richard and I looked at one another again. It =
was
a most singular thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr
Skimpole's. He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I m=
ay
venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had entirely was=
hed
his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.
‘I thought,’ he suggested, as if
good-naturedly to help us out, ‘that being parties in a Chancery suit
concerning (as people say) a large amount of property, Mr Richard or his
beautiful cousin, or both, could sign something, or make over something, or
give some sort of undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the
business name of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within t=
heir
power that would settle this?’
‘Not a bit on it,’ said the strange
man.
‘Really?’ returned Mr Skimpole. =
8216;That
seems odd, now, to one who is no judge of these things!’
‘Odd or even,’ said the stranger g=
ruffly,
‘I tell you, not a bit on it!’
‘Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep =
your
temper!’ Mr Skimpole gently reasoned with him as he made a little dra=
wing
of his head on the fly-leaf of a book. ‘Don't be ruffled by your
occupation. We can separate you from your office; we can separate the
individual from the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in
private life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal=
of
poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious.’
The stranger only answered with another violent
snort, whether in acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejecti=
on
of it, he did not express to me.
‘Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dea=
r Mr
Richard,’ said Mr Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he
looked at his drawing with his head on one side, ‘here you see me utt=
erly
incapable of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be f=
ree.
The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole w=
hat
it concedes to the butterflies!’
‘My dear Miss Summerson,’ said Ric=
hard
in a whisper, ‘I have ten pounds that I received from Mr Kenge. I must
try what that will do.’
I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, whi=
ch I
had saved from my quarterly allowance during several years. I had always
thought that some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, with=
out
any relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep some
little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told Richard of m=
y having
this little store and having no present need of it, and I asked him delicat=
ely
to inform Mr Skimpole, while I should be gone to fetch it, that we would ha=
ve
the pleasure of paying his debt.
When I came back, Mr Skimpole kissed my hand a=
nd
seemed quite touched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that
perplexing and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal
considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our happin=
ess
alone affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater grace of the
transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as Mr Skimpole now jocul=
arly
called him), I counted out the money and received the necessary acknowledgm=
ent.
This, too, delighted Mr Skimpole.
His compliments were so delicately administered
that I blushed less than I might have done and settled with the stranger in=
the
white coat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and
shortly said, ‘Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss.’=
‘My friend,’ said Mr Skimpole,
standing with his back to the fire after giving up the sketch when it was h=
alf
finished, ‘I should like to ask you something, without offence.’=
;
I think the reply was, ‘Cut away, then!&=
#8217;
‘Did you know this morning, now, that you
were coming out on this errand?’ said Mr Skimpole.
‘Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time,=
’
said Coavinses.
‘It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't =
make
you at all uneasy?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Coavinses. ̵=
6;I
know'd if you wos missed to-day, you wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day ma=
kes
no such odds.’
‘But when you came down here,’
proceeded Mr Skimpole, ‘it was a fine day. The sun was shining, the w=
ind
was blowing, the lights and shadows were passing across the fields, the bir=
ds
were singing.’
‘Nobody said they warn't, in MY hearing,=
’
returned Coavinses.
‘No,’ observed Mr Skimpole. ‘=
;But
what did you think upon the road?’
‘Wot do you mean?’ growled Coavins=
es
with an appearance of strong resentment. ‘Think! I've got enough to d=
o,
and little enough to get for it without thinking. Thinking!’ (with
profound contempt).
‘Then you didn't think, at all events,=
8217;
proceeded Mr Skimpole, ‘to this effect: 'Harold Skimpole loves to see=
the
sun shine, loves to hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights =
and
shadows, loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature's great cathed=
ral.
And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his sh=
are
in such possessions, which are his only birthright!' You thought nothing to
that effect?’
‘I--certainly--did--NOT,’ said Coa=
vinses,
whose doggedness in utterly renouncing the idea was of that intense kind th=
at
he could only give adequate expression to it by putting a long interval bet=
ween
each word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have dislocated=
his
neck.
‘Very odd and very curious, the mental
process is, in you men of business!’ said Mr Skimpole thoughtfully. &=
#8216;Thank
you, my friend. Good night.’
As our absence had been long enough already to
seem strange downstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by
the fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr Skimpole presently appeared, and
Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the remainder =
of
the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from Mr Jarndyce, who w=
as
very fond of the game and from whom I wished of course to learn it as quick=
ly
as I could in order that I might be of the very small use of being able to =
play
when he had no better adversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr Skimp=
ole
played some fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and
the violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all effo=
rt
his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that Richard and I
seemed to retain the transferred impression of having been arrested since
dinner and that it was very curious altogether.
It was late before we separated, for when Ada =
was
going at eleven o'clock, Mr Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariou=
sly
that the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours from
night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and his radiant
face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us there, if he had se=
en
fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were lingering for a few moments by the
fire, wondering whether Mrs Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the =
day,
when Mr Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned.
‘Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!&=
#8217;
he said, rubbing his head and walking about with his good-humoured vexation=
. ‘What's
this they tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing?=
Why
did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The wind's round
again. I feel it all over me!’
We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
‘Come, Rick, come! I must settle this be=
fore
I sleep. How much are you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you kno=
w!
Why did you? How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!’
‘Really, sir,’ said Richard, ̵=
6;I
don't think it would be honourable in me to tell you. Mr Skimpole relied up=
on
us--’
‘Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies =
upon
everybody!’ said Mr Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping
short.
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Everybody! And he'll be in the same scr=
ape
again next week!’ said Mr Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, wi=
th a
candle in his hand that had gone out. ‘He's always in the same scrape=
. He
was born in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the
newspapers when his mother was confined was 'On Tuesday last, at her reside=
nce
in Botheration Buildings, Mrs Skimpole of a son in difficulties.'‘
Richard laughed heartily but added, ‘Sti=
ll,
sir, I don't want to shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and i=
f I
submit to your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I h=
ope
you will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do press =
me,
sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you.’
‘Well!’ cried Mr Jarndyce, stopping
again, and making several absent endeavours to put his candlestick in his
pocket. ‘I--here! Take it away, my dear. I don't know what I am about
with it; it's all the wind--invariably has that effect--I won't press you,
Rick; you may be right. But really--to get hold of you and Esther--and to
squeeze you like a couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges! It'll bl=
ow a
gale in the course of the night!’
He was now alternately putting his hands into =
his
pockets as if he were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them=
out
again and vehemently rubbing them all over his head.
I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting
that Mr Skimpole, being in all such matters quite a child--
‘Eh, my dear?’ said Mr Jarndyce,
catching at the word.
‘Being quite a child, sir,’ said I=
, ‘and
so different from other people--’
‘You are right!’ said Mr Jarndyce,
brightening. ‘Your woman's wit hits the mark. He is a child--an absol=
ute
child. I told you he was a child, you know, when I first mentioned him.R=
17;
Certainly! Certainly! we said.
‘And he IS a child. Now, isn't he?’
asked Mr Jarndyce, brightening more and more.
He was indeed, we said.
‘When you come to think of it, it's the
height of childishness in you--I mean me--’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘=
to
regard him for a moment as a man. You can't make HIM responsible. The idea =
of
Harold Skimpole with designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha,
ha!’
It was so delicious to see the clouds about his
bright face clearing, and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it
was impossible not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness
which was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any =
one,
that I saw the tears in Ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh, and felt th=
em
in my own.
‘Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I =
am,’
said Mr Jarndyce, ‘to require reminding of it! The whole business sho=
ws
the child from beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of
singling YOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would ha=
ve
thought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds, it would
have been just the same!’ said Mr Jarndyce with his whole face in a g=
low.
We all confirmed it from our night's experienc=
e.
‘To be sure, to be sure!’ said Mr
Jarndyce. ‘However, Rick, Esther, and you too, Ada, for I don't know =
that
even your little purse is safe from his inexperience--I must have a promise=
all
round that nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! N=
ot
even sixpences.’
We all promised faithfully, Richard with a mer=
ry
glance at me touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no dange=
r of
OUR transgressing.
‘As to Skimpole,’ said Mr Jarndyce=
, ‘a
habitable doll's house with good board and a few tin people to get into debt
with and borrow money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's s=
leep
by this time, I suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my more
worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!’
He peeped in again, with a smiling face, befor=
e we
had lighted our candles, and said, ‘Oh! I have been looking at the
weather-cock. I find it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south=
!’
And went away singing to himself.
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a
little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and t=
hat
he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal,
rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate =
any
one. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of=
the
difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and t=
he
winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a differ=
ent
purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
Indeed, so much affection for him had been add=
ed
in this one evening to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to underst=
and
him through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr Skimpol=
e or
in Mrs Jellyby I could not expect to be able to reconcile, having so little
experience or practical knowledge. Neither did I try, for my thoughts were =
busy
when I was alone, with Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed=
to
receive concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps,
would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have persuade=
d it
to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother's house and came along
the intervening track, raising up shadowy speculations which had sometimes
trembled there in the dark as to what knowledge Mr Jarndyce had of my earli=
est
history--even as to the possibility of his being my father, though that idle
dream was quite gone now.
It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up =
from
the fire. It was not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful
spirit and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, ‘Esther, Esther,
Esther! Duty, my dear!’ and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys
such a shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to b=
ed.
While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, i=
t is
still wet weather down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever
falling--drip, drip, drip--by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-
pavement, the Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire
that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine
again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination on the spot,=
for
Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he were, would not do much f=
or
it in that particular), but is in Paris with my Lady; and solitude, with du=
sky
wings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.
There may be some motions of fancy among the l=
ower
animals at Chesney Wold. The horses in the stables--the long stables in a
barren, red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a
clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who love to
perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting--THEY may contemplate
some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions, and may be better artist=
s at
them than the grooms. The old roan, so famous for cross-country work, turni=
ng
his large eyeball to the grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh
leaves that glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and=
may
have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out the n=
ext
stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The grey, whose pl=
ace
is opposite the door and who with an impatient rattle of his halter pricks =
his
ears and turns his head so wistfully when it is opened, and to whom the ope=
ner
says, ‘Woa grey, then, steady! Noabody wants you to-day!’ may k=
now
it quite as well as the man. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanion=
able
half-dozen, stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is =
shut
in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at the Dedl=
ock
Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting) the po=
ny
in the loose-box in the corner.
So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the
court-yard with his large head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine w=
hen
the shadows of the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and l=
eave
him at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own hou=
se,
where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very much wanting
something to worry besides himself and his chain. So now, half-waking and
all-winking, he may recall the house full of company, the coach-houses full=
of
vehicles, the stables full of horses, and the out-buildings full of attenda=
nts
upon horses, until he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see=
how
it is. Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the spir=
it, ‘Rain,
rain, rain! Nothing but rain--and no family here!’ as he goes in again
and lies down with a gloomy yawn.
So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across
the park, who have their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wi=
nd
has been very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself-- upsta=
irs,
downstairs, and in my Lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole country-side,
while the raindrops are pattering round their inactivity. So the rabbits wi=
th
their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of holes at roots of trees,=
may
be lively with ideas of the breezy days when their ears are blown about or =
of
those seasons of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The tu=
rkey
in the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably
Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully taken from=
him
when he got into the lane among the felled trees, where there was a barn and
barley. The discontented goose, who stoops to pass under the old gateway,
twenty feet high, may gabble out, if we only knew it, a waddling preference=
for
weather when the gateway casts its shadow on the ground.
Be this as it may, there is not much fancy
otherwise stirring at Chesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment,=
it
goes, like a little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually
leads off to ghosts and mystery.
It has rained so hard and rained so long down =
in
Lincolnshire that Mrs Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has
several times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that
the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs Rouncewell might have been suffici=
ently
assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather deaf, which nothing will
induce her to believe. She is a fine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderful=
ly
neat, and has such a back and such a stomacher that if her stays should turn
out when she dies to have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nob=
ody
who knows her would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs Rouncew=
ell
little. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she expresses=
it,
‘is what she looks at.’ She sits in her room (in a side passage=
on
the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a smooth quadrangle, ado=
rned
at regular intervals with smooth round trees and smooth round blocks of sto=
ne,
as if the trees were going to play at bowls with the stones), and the whole
house reposes on her mind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and
fluttered, but it is shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs Rouncewell's
iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep.
It is the next difficult thing to an impossibi=
lity
to imagine Chesney Wold without Mrs Rouncewell, but she has only been here
fifty years. Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer ‘=
fifty
year, three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live t=
ill
Tuesday.’ Mr Rouncewell died some time before the decease of the pret=
ty
fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took it with him) in a
corner of the churchyard in the park near the mouldy porch. He was born in =
the
market-town, and so was his young widow. Her progress in the family began in
the time of the last Sir Leicester and originated in the still-room.
The present representative of the Dedlocks is =
an
excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of
individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was
born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a
discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would never recover
himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is an excellent master=
still,
holding it a part of his state to be so. He has a great liking for Mrs
Rouncewell; he says she is a most respectable, creditable woman. He always
shakes hands with her when he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes a=
way;
and if he were very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run ove=
r,
or placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he wo=
uld
say if he could speak, ‘Leave me, and send Mrs Rouncewell here!’
feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with anybody else.=
Mrs Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had =
two
sons, of whom the younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came
back. Even to this hour, Mrs Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure w=
hen
she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover about=
her
in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a
gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second son would have been provi=
ded
for at Chesney Wold and would have been made steward in due season, but he
took, when he was a schoolboy, to constructing steam-engines out of saucepa=
ns
and setting birds to draw their own water with the least possible amount of
labour, so assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure tha=
t a
thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the whe=
el
and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs Rouncewell great uneasiness.=
She
felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in the Wat Tyler direction, we=
ll
knowing that Sir Leicester had that general impression of an aptitude for a=
ny
art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be considered essential. But the
doomed young rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing =
no
sign of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model of=
a
power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his backslidings to t=
he
baronet. ‘Mrs Rouncewell,’ said Sir Leicester, ‘I can nev=
er
consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any subject. You had better =
get
rid of your boy; you had better get him into some Works. The iron country
farther north is, I suppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these
tendencies.’ Farther north he went, and farther north he grew up; and=
if
Sir Leicester Dedlock ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his
mother, or ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regar=
ded
him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and grim, w=
ho
were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three nights in the w=
eek
for unlawful purposes.
Nevertheless, Mrs Rouncewell's son has, in the
course of nature and art, grown up, and established himself, and married, a=
nd
called unto him Mrs Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his
apprenticeship, and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was se=
nt
to enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture of t=
his
life, stands leaning against the chimney- piece this very day in Mrs
Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
‘And, again and again, I am glad to see =
you,
Watt! And, once again, I am glad to see you, Watt!’ says Mrs Rouncewe=
ll. ‘You
are a fine young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!’ Mrs
Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
‘They say I am like my father, grandmoth=
er.’
‘Like him, also, my dear--but most like =
your
poor uncle George! And your dear father.’ Mrs Rouncewell folds her ha=
nds
again. ‘He is well?’
‘Thriving, grandmother, in every way.=
217;
‘I am thankful!’ Mrs Rouncewell is
fond of her son but has a plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were=
a
very honourable soldier who had gone over to the enemy.
‘He is quite happy?’ says she.
‘Quite.’
‘I am thankful! So he has brought you up=
to
follow in his ways and has sent you into foreign countries and the like? We=
ll,
he knows best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't
understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity of go=
od
company too!’
‘Grandmother,’ says the young man,
changing the subject, ‘what a very pretty girl that was I found with =
you
just now. You called her Rosa?’
‘Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow =
in
the village. Maids are so hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her ab=
out
me young. She's an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house alread=
y,
very pretty. She lives with me at my table here.’
‘I hope I have not driven her away?̵=
7;
‘She supposes we have family affairs to
speak about, I dare say. She is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young
woman. And scarcer,’ says Mrs Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to =
its
utmost limits, ‘than it formerly was!’
The young man inclines his head in acknowledgm=
ent
of the precepts of experience. Mrs Rouncewell listens.
‘Wheels!’ says she. They have long
been audible to the younger ears of her companion. ‘What wheels on su=
ch a
day as this, for gracious sake?’
After a short interval, a tap at the door. =
216;Come
in!’ A dark- eyed, dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fres=
h in
her rosy and yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on=
her
hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
‘What company is this, Rosa?’ says=
Mrs
Rouncewell.
‘It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who
want to see the house-- yes, and if you please, I told them so!’ in q=
uick
reply to a gesture of dissent from the housekeeper. ‘I went to the
hall-door and told them it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the yo=
ung
man who was driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this
card to you.’
‘Read it, my dear Watt,’ says the
housekeeper.
Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they
drop it between them and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick=
it
up. Rosa is shyer than before.
‘Mr Guppy’ is all the information =
the
card yields.
‘Guppy!’ repeats Mrs Rouncewell, &=
#8216;MR
Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard of him!’
‘If you please, he told ME that!’ =
says
Rosa. ‘But he said that he and the other young gentleman came from Lo=
ndon
only last night by the mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten m=
iles
off, this morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had h=
eard
a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do with
themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are lawyers. He s=
ays
he is not in Mr Tulkinghorn's office, but he is sure he may make use of Mr
Tulkinghorn's name if necessary.’ Finding, now she leaves off, that s=
he
has been making quite a long speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
Now, Mr Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and
parcel of the place, and besides, is supposed to have made Mrs Rouncewell's
will. The old lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a
favour, and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden
wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The grandmother,=
who
is pleased that he should have that interest, accompanies him--though to do=
him
justice, he is exceedingly unwilling to trouble her.
‘Much obliged to you, ma'am!’ says=
Mr
Guppy, divesting himself of his wet dreadnought in the hall. ‘Us Lond=
on
lawyers don't often get an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of=
it,
you know.’
The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity =
of
deportment, waves her hand towards the great staircase. Mr Guppy and his fr=
iend
follow Rosa; Mrs Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener =
goes
before to open the shutters.
As is usually the case with people who go over
houses, Mr Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. =
They
straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the ri=
ght
things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of
spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they
enter, Mrs Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart i=
n a
window-seat or other such nook and listens with stately approval to Rosa's
exposition. Her grandson is so attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever=
--
and prettier. Thus they pass on from room to room, raising the pictured
Dedlocks for a few brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and
reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It appears to t=
he
afflicted Mr Guppy and his inconsolable friend that there is no end to the
Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to consist in their never having done
anything to distinguish themselves for seven hundred years.
Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold can=
not
revive Mr Guppy's spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and=
has
hardly strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,
painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a charm. He
recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon interest; he seems to be
fixed and fascinated by it.
‘Dear me!’ says Mr Guppy. ‘W=
ho's
that?’
‘The picture over the fire-place,’
says Rosa, ‘is the portrait of the present Lady Dedlock. It is consid=
ered
a perfect likeness, and the best work of the master.’
‘Blest,’ says Mr Guppy, staring in=
a
kind of dismay at his friend, ‘if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know
her! Has the picture been engraved, miss?’
‘The picture has never been engraved. Sir
Leicester has always refused permission.’
‘Well!’ says Mr Guppy in a low voi=
ce. ‘I'll
be shot if it ain't very curious how well I know that picture! So that's La=
dy
Dedlock, is it!’
‘The picture on the right is the present=
Sir
Leicester Dedlock. The picture on the left is his father, the late Sir
Leicester.’
Mr Guppy has no eyes for either of these magna=
tes.
‘It's unaccountable to me,’ he says, still staring at the portr=
ait,
‘how well I know that picture! I'm dashed,’ adds Mr Guppy, look=
ing
round, ‘if I don't think I must have had a dream of that picture, you
know!’
As no one present takes any especial interest =
in Mr
Guppy's dreams, the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so
absorbed by the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young
gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a dazed
state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for interest and follows
into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare, as if he were looking
everywhere for Lady Dedlock again.
He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, whi=
ch
are the last shown, as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows =
from
which she looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to deat=
h.
All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains to see =
and
are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to the end of the
sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her description; which is
always this: ‘The terrace below is much admired. It is called, from an
old story in the family, the Ghost's Walk.’
‘No?’ says Mr Guppy, greedily curi=
ous.
‘What's the story, miss? Is it anything about a picture?’
‘Pray tell us the story,’ says Wat=
t in
a half whisper.
‘I don't know it, sir.’ Rosa is sh=
yer
than ever.
‘It is not related to visitors; it is al=
most
forgotten,’ says the housekeeper, advancing. ‘It has never been
more than a family anecdote.’
‘You'll excuse my asking again if it has
anything to do with a picture, ma'am,’ observes Mr Guppy, ‘beca=
use
I do assure you that the more I think of that picture the better I know it,
without knowing how I know it!’
The story has nothing to do with a picture; the
housekeeper can guarantee that. Mr Guppy is obliged to her for the informat=
ion
and is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided down
another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard to drive aw=
ay.
It is now dusk. Mrs Rouncewell can trust to the discretion of her two young
hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace came to have that ghostly name.
She seats herself in a large chair by the
fast-darkening window and tells them: ‘In the wicked days, my dears, =
of
King Charles the First--I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels=
who
leagued themselves against that excellent king--Sir Morbury Dedlock was the
owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a ghost in the fami=
ly
before those days, I can't say. I should think it very likely indeed.’=
;
Mrs Rouncewell holds this opinion because she
considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a
ghost. She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a
genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
‘Sir Morbury Dedlock,’ says Mrs
Rouncewell, ‘was, I have no occasion to say, on the side of the bless=
ed
martyr. But it IS supposed that his Lady, who had none of the family blood =
in
her veins, favoured the bad cause. It is said that she had relations among =
King
Charles's enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she g=
ave
them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his Majest=
y's
cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer to the door of th=
eir
council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a sound like a footstep passing
along the terrace, Watt?’
Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
‘I hear the rain-drip on the stones,R=
17;
replies the young man, ‘and I hear a curious echo--I suppose an
echo--which is very like a halting step.’
The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: =
8216;Partly
on account of this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir
Morbury and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty tempe=
r.
They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they had no
children to moderate between them. After her favourite brother, a young
gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir Morbury's near kinsman), her
feeling was so violent that she hated the race into which she had married. =
When
the Dedlocks were about to ride out from Chesney Wold in the king's cause, =
she
is supposed to have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead=
of
night and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour, h=
er
husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the stall whe=
re
his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the wrist, and in a
struggle or in a fall or through the horse being frightened and lashing out,
she was lamed in the hip and from that hour began to pine away.’
The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a lit=
tle
more than a whisper.
‘She had been a lady of a handsome figure
and a noble carriage. She never complained of the change; she never spoke to
any one of being crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to =
walk
upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and do=
wn,
up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every =
day.
At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she had never, on any persuasio=
n,
opened her lips since that night), standing at the great south window, saw =
her
drop upon the pavement. He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him=
as
he bent over her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, 'I will die =
here
where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I will =
walk
here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when calamity or when
disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen for my step!'‘
Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom
looks down upon the ground, half frightened and half shy.
‘There and then she died. And from those
days,’ says Mrs Rouncewell, ‘the name has come down--the Ghost's
Walk. If the tread is an echo, it is an echo that is only heard after dark,=
and
is often unheard for a long while together. But it comes back from time to
time; and so sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be h=
eard
then.’
‘And disgrace, grandmother--’ says
Watt.
‘Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold,=
8217;
returns the housekeeper.
Her grandson apologizes with ‘True. True=
.’
‘That is the story. Whatever the sound i=
s,
it is a worrying sound,’ says Mrs Rouncewell, getting up from her cha=
ir; ‘and
what is to be noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afrai=
d of
nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot shut it
out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed there, 'a purpos=
e)
that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can play music. You understand
how those things are managed?’
‘Pretty well, grandmother, I think.̵=
7;
‘Set it a-going.’
Watt sets it a-going--music and all.
‘Now, come hither,’ says the
housekeeper. ‘Hither, child, towards my Lady's pillow. I am not sure =
that
it is dark enough yet, but listen! Can you hear the sound upon the terrace,
through the music, and the beat, and everything?’
‘I certainly can!’
‘So my Lady says.’
It was interesting when I dressed before dayli=
ght
to peep out of window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes l=
ike
two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness =
of
last night, to watch how it turned out when the day came on. As the prospect
gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had
wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in
discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At fir=
st
they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars s=
till
glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill u=
p so
fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hou=
r.
Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, t=
he
dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a
cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massi=
ve
tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible wi=
th
its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have learnt), se=
rene
and gentle influences often proceed.
Every part of the house was in such order, and
every one was so attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches=
of
keys, though what with trying to remember the contents of each little
store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate about
jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and china, and a
great many other things; and what with being generally a methodical,
old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy that I could not
believe it was breakfast- time when I heard the bell ring. Away I ran, howe=
ver,
and made tea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of the
tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I
thought I would take a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that to=
o. I
found it quite a delightful place--in front, the pretty avenue and drive by
which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the gravel so
terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the back,
the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it open=
to
smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that distance. Beyond =
the
flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug lit=
tle
rick-yard, and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with i=
ts
three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, some so
small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the southfront for roses
and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look--it was, as A=
da
said when she came out to meet me with her arm through that of its master,
worthy of her cousin John, a bold thing to say, though he only pinched her =
dear
cheek for it.
Mr Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he
had been overnight. There was honey on the table, and it led him into a
discourse about bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should t=
hink
he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the overwee=
ning
assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be propos=
ed
as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't =
do
it-- nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a meri=
t of
his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the world banging agai=
nst
everything that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to
take notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the
world would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was a
ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon=
as
you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a Manchester man if =
he
spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he thought a drone the embodi=
ment
of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The drone said unaffectedly, ‘You will
excuse me; I really cannot attend to the shop! I find myself in a world in
which there is so much to see and so short a time to see it in that I must =
take
the liberty of looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody =
who
doesn't want to look about him.’ This appeared to Mr Skimpole to be t=
he
drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy, always supposing
the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the bee, which, so far as =
he
knew, the easy fellow always was, if the consequential creature would only =
let
him, and not be so conceited about his honey!
He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot o=
ver
a variety of ground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as
serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them
still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties. They had
occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the passages on my ret=
urn
with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr Jarndyce called me into a small ro=
om
next his bed-chamber, which I found to be in part a little library of books=
and
papers and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat- bo=
xes.
‘Sit down, my dear,’ said Mr Jarnd=
yce.
‘This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come
and growl here.’
‘You must be here very seldom, sir,̵=
7;
said I.
‘Oh, you don't know me!’ he return=
ed. ‘When
I am deceived or disappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge
here. The growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of
half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!’
I could not help it; I tried very hard, but be=
ing
alone with that benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling=
so
happy and so honoured there, and my heart so full--
I kissed his hand. I don't know what I said, or
even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and walked to the window; I almost
believed with an intention of jumping out, until he turned and I was reassu=
red
by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on
the head, and I sat down.
‘There! There!’ he said. ‘Th=
at's
over. Pooh! Don't be foolish.’
‘It shall not happen again, sir,’ I
returned, ‘but at first it is difficult--’
‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘It's e=
asy,
easy. Why not? I hear of a good little orphan girl without a protector, and=
I
take it into my head to be that protector. She grows up, and more than
justifies my good opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is
there in all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have
before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again.’
I said to myself, ‘Esther, my dear, you
surprise me! This really is not what I expected of you!’ And it had s=
uch
a good effect that I folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered mys=
elf.
Mr Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as
confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him every
morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if I had.
‘Of course, Esther,’ he said, R=
16;you
don't understand this Chancery business?’
And of course I shook my head.
‘I don't know who does,’ he return=
ed. ‘The
lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original
merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's a=
bout
a will and the trusts under a will--or it was once. It's about nothing but
costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and
interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and
motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord
Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to
dusty death, about costs. That's the great question. All the rest, by some
extraordinary means, has melted away.’
‘But it was, sir,’ said I, to bring
him back, for he began to rub his head, ‘about a will?’
‘Why, yes, it was about a will when it w=
as
about anything,’ he returned. ‘A certain Jarndyce, in an evil h=
our,
made a great fortune, and made a great will. In the question how the trusts
under that will are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is
squandered away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable
condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had committed an
enormous crime in having money left them, and the will itself is made a dead
letter. All through the deplorable cause, everything that everybody in it,
except one man, knows already is referred to that only one man who don't kn=
ow,
it to find out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copie=
s,
over and over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way=
of
cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the=
usual
course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the middle and up again thr=
ough
such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and corruptio=
n as
was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath. Equity se=
nds
questions to law, law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can't do
this, equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do
anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for=
A,
and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B; and so on
through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple pie. And thus,
through years and years, and lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly
beginning over and over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out =
of
the suit on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to
it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When my great
uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the
end!’
‘The Mr Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have
heard?’
He nodded gravely. ‘I was his heir, and =
this
was his house, Esther. When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left t=
he
signs of his misery upon it.’
‘How changed it must be now!’ I sa=
id.
‘It had been called, before his time, the
Peaks. He gave it its present name and lived here shut up, day and night po=
ring
over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to
disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meant=
ime,
the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, =
the
rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rott=
ing
door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to m=
e to
have been blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined.’=
;
He walked a little to and fro after saying thi=
s to
himself with a shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and=
sat
down again with his hands in his pockets.
‘I told you this was the growlery, my de=
ar.
Where was I?’
I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had m=
ade
in Bleak House.
‘Bleak House; true. There is, in that ci=
ty
of London there, some property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak
House was then; I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought =
to
call it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that wi=
ll
ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but an
eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses, with the=
ir
eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame,
with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder,
the iron rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the
stone steps to every door (and every door might be death's door) turning
stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying.
Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped
with the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all ov=
er
England--the children know them!’
‘How changed it is!’ I said again.=
‘Why, so it is,’ he answered much =
more
cheerfully; ‘and it is wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of=
the
picture.’ (The idea of my wisdom!) ‘These are things I never ta=
lk
about or even think about, excepting in the growlery here. If you consider =
it
right to mention them to Rick and Ada,’ looking seriously at me, R=
16;you
can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther.’
‘I hope, sir--’ said I.
‘I think you had better call me guardian=
, my
dear.’
I felt that I was choking again--I taxed myself
with it, ‘Esther, now, you know you are!’--when he feigned to s=
ay
this slightly, as if it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But=
I
gave the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to
myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the baske=
t,
looked at him quietly.
‘I hope, guardian,’ said I, ‘=
;that
you may not trust too much to my discretion. I hope you may not mistake me.=
I
am afraid it will be a disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, =
but
it really is the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the hon=
esty
to confess it.’
He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the
contrary. He told me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very =
well
indeed and that I was quite clever enough for him.
‘I hope I may turn out so,’ said I=
, ‘but
I am much afraid of it, guardian.’
‘You are clever enough to be the good li=
ttle
woman of our lives here, my dear,’ he returned playfully; ‘the
little old woman of the child's (I don't mean Skimpole's) rhyme:
‘'Little old woman, and whither so high?'
'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
‘You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR
sky in the course of your housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we s=
hall
have to abandon the growlery and nail up the door.’
This was the beginning of my being called Old
Woman, and Little Old Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs Shipton, and Mother Hubbar=
d,
and Dame Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became
quite lost among them.
‘However,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ̵=
6;to
return to our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. Wha=
t's
to be done with him?’
Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice =
on
such a point!
‘Here he is, Esther,’ said Mr
Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands into his pockets and stretching out=
his
legs. ‘He must have a profession; he must make some choice for himsel=
f.
There will be a world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be
done.’
‘More what, guardian?’ said I.
‘More wiglomeration,’ said he. =
216;It's
the only name I know for the thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge
and Carboy will have something to say about it; Master Somebody--a sort of
ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at
the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will have something to say about i=
t;
counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will have somet=
hing
to say about it; the satellites will have something to say about it; they w=
ill
all have to be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will be
vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in
general, wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with
wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a pit of=
it,
I don't know; so it is.’
He began to rub his head again and to hint tha=
t he
felt the wind. But it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me =
that
whether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure=
to
recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was sure to t=
urn
comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs=
.
‘Perhaps it would be best, first of all,=
’
said I, ‘to ask Mr Richard what he inclines to himself.’
‘Exactly so,’ he returned. ‘=
That's
what I mean! You know, just accustom yourself to talk it over, with your ta=
ct
and in your quiet way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We
are sure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman.=
217;
I really was frightened at the thought of the
importance I was attaining and the number of things that were being confide=
d to
me. I had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to Richar=
d.
But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do my best, thoug=
h I
feared (I realty felt it necessary to repeat this) that he thought me much =
more
sagacious than I was. At which my guardian only laughed the pleasantest lau=
gh I
ever heard.
‘Come!’ he said, rising and pushing
back his chair. ‘I think we may have done with the growlery for one d=
ay!
Only a concluding word. Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?=
217;
He looked so attentively at me that I looked
attentively at him and felt sure I understood him.
‘About myself, sir?’ said I.
‘Yes.’
‘Guardian,’ said I, venturing to p=
ut
my hand, which was suddenly colder than I could have wished, in his, ‘=
;nothing!
I am quite sure that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need=
to
know, I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance a=
nd
confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart indeed. I have
nothing to ask you, nothing in the world.’
He drew my hand through his arm and we went aw=
ay
to look for Ada. From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserve=
d,
quite content to know no more, quite happy.
We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak
House, for we had to become acquainted with many residents in and out of the
neighbourhood who knew Mr Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody =
knew
him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us when =
we
began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him in the growler=
y of
a morning to find how the great object of the lives of nearly all his
correspondents appeared to be to form themselves into committees for gettin=
g in
and laying out money. The ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed=
, I
think they were even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the =
most
impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite
extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their whole li=
ves
in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory-- shil=
ling
cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted
everything. They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted
money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they want=
ed
autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr Jarndyce had--or h=
ad
not. Their objects were as various as their demands. They were going to rai=
se
new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old buildings, they were
going to establish in a picturesque building (engraving of proposed west el=
evation
attached) the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a
testimonial to Mrs Jellyby, they were going to have their secretary's portr=
ait
painted and presented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was =
well
known, they were going to get up everything, I really believe, from five
hundred thousand tracts to an annuity and from a marble monument to a silver
tea-pot. They took a multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, t=
he
Daughters of Britain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, t=
he
Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They appeared to=
be
always excited about canvassing and electing. They seemed to our poor wits,=
and
according to their own accounts, to be constantly polling people by tens of
thousands, yet never bringing their candidates in for anything. It made our
heads ache to think, on the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
Among the ladies who were most distinguished f=
or
this rapacious benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs Pardiggl=
e,
who seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr Jarndyce, to be
almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs Jellyby herself. We observed that=
the
wind always changed when Mrs Pardiggle became the subject of conversation a=
nd
that it invariably interrupted Mr Jarndyce and prevented his going any fart=
her,
when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one,=
the
people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the peop=
le
who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore curious to=
see
Mrs Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former class, and were gl=
ad
when she called one day with her five young sons.
She was a formidable style of lady with
spectacles, a prominent nose, and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanti=
ng a
great deal of room. And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs =
with
her skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at home,=
we
received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold weather and to ma=
ke
the little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
‘These, young ladies,’ said Mrs
Pardiggle with great volubility after the first salutations, ‘are my =
five
boys. You may have seen their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps
more than one) in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr Jarndyce. Egbert=
, my
eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of
five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a
half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the Great National
Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny;
Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my
youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Jo=
y,
and is pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form.’
We had never seen such dissatisfied children. =
It
was not merely that they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were
certainly that too--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At
the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed Egbert =
to
be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage
frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentio=
ned,
darkened in a peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I
must except, however, the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who =
was
stolidly and evenly miserable.
‘You have been visiting, I understand,=
8217;
said Mrs Pardiggle, ‘at Mrs Jellyby's?’
We said yes, we had passed one night there.
‘Mrs Jellyby,’ pursued the lady,
always speaking in the same demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voi=
ce
impressed my fancy as if it had a sort of spectacles on too--and I may take=
the
opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less engaging by=
her
eyes being what Ada called ‘choking eyes,’ meaning very promine=
nt--’Mrs
Jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves a helping hand. My boys have
contributed to the African project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire
allowance of nine weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same;=
the
rest, according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs
Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs Jellyby in her treatment of her
young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that her young fami=
ly
are excluded from participation in the objects to which she is devoted. She=
may
be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with=
MY
young family. I take them everywhere.’
I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) th=
at
from the ill- conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. =
He
turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
‘They attend matins with me (very pretti=
ly
done) at half-past six o'clock in the morning all the year round, including=
of
course the depth of winter,’ said Mrs Pardiggle rapidly, ‘and t=
hey
are with me during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I a=
m a
Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on the l=
ocal
Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my canvassing alone is
very extensive--perhaps no one's more so. But they are my companions
everywhere; and by these means they acquire that knowledge of the poor, and
that capacity of doing charitable business in general--in short, that taste=
for
the sort of thing--which will render them in after life a service to their
neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not frivol=
ous;
they expend the entire amount of their allowance in subscriptions, under my
direction; and they have attended as many public meetings and listened to as
many lectures, orations, and discussions as generally fall to the lot of few
grown people. Alfred (five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election
joined the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manife=
sted
consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours from the
chairman of the evening.’
Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or
would, forgive the injury of that night.
‘You may have observed, Miss Summerson,&=
#8217;
said Mrs Pardiggle, ‘in some of the lists to which I have referred, in
the possession of our esteemed friend Mr Jarndyce, that the names of my you=
ng
family are concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. T=
hat
is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my mite fi=
rst;
then my young family enrol their contributions, according to their ages and
their little means; and then Mr Pardiggle brings up the rear. Mr Pardiggle =
is
happy to throw in his limited donation, under my direction; and thus things=
are
made not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others.=
217;
Suppose Mr Pardiggle were to dine with Mr Jell=
yby,
and suppose Mr Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr Pardiggl=
e,
would Mr Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr
Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it came int=
o my
head.
‘You are very pleasantly situated here!&=
#8217;
said Mrs Pardiggle.
We were glad to change the subject, and going =
to
the window, pointed out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacl=
es
appeared to me to rest with curious indifference.
‘You know Mr Gusher?’ said our
visitor.
We were obliged to say that we had not the
pleasure of Mr Gusher's acquaintance.
‘The loss is yours, I assure you,’
said Mrs Pardiggle with her commanding deportment. ‘He is a very ferv=
id,
impassioned speaker-- full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now,
which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public meeting=
, he
would improve almost any occasion you could mention for hours and hours! By
this time, young ladies,’ said Mrs Pardiggle, moving back to her chai=
r and
overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little round table at a considera=
ble
distance with my work-basket on it, ‘by this time you have found me o=
ut,
I dare say?’
This was really such a confusing question that=
Ada
looked at me in perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own conscious=
ness
after what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour o=
f my
cheeks.
‘Found out, I mean,’ said Mrs
Pardiggle, ‘the prominent point in my character. I am aware that it i=
s so
prominent as to be discoverable immediately. I lay myself open to detection=
, I
know. Well! I freely admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I e=
njoy
hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to ha=
rd
work that I don't know what fatigue is.’
We murmured that it was very astonishing and v=
ery
gratifying, or something to that effect. I don't think we knew what it was
either, but this is what our politeness expressed.
‘I do not understand what it is to be ti=
red;
you cannot tire me if you try!’ said Mrs Pardiggle. ‘The quanti=
ty
of exertion (which is no exertion to me), the amount of business (which I
regard as nothing), that I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have s=
een
my young family, and Mr Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I
may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!’
If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more
malicious than he had already looked, this was the time when he did it. I
observed that he doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the
crown of his cap, which was under his left arm.
‘This gives me a great advantage when I =
am
making my rounds,’ said Mrs Pardiggle. ‘If I find a person
unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell that person directly, 'I am
incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on
until I have done.' It answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I hope I shall ha=
ve
your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's very so=
on.’
At first I tried to excuse myself for the pres=
ent
on the general ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not
neglect. But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more
particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was
inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very differently
situated, and addressing them from suitable points of view. That I had not =
that
delicate knowledge of the heart which must be essential to such a work. Tha=
t I
had much to learn, myself, before I could teach others, and that I could not
confide in my good intentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to=
be
as useful as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those
immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually and
naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but confidence, beca=
use Mrs
Pardiggle was much older than I, and had great experience, and was so very
military in her manners.
‘You are wrong, Miss Summerson,’ s=
aid
she, ‘but perhaps you are not equal to hard work or the excitement of=
it,
and that makes a vast difference. If you would like to see how I go through=
my
work, I am now about--with my young family--to visit a brickmaker in the
neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you with me.
Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour.’
Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were g=
oing
out in any case, accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting =
on
our bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs
Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light objec=
ts
it contained. Mrs Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I followed with the
family.
Ada told me afterwards that Mrs Pardiggle talk=
ed
in the same loud tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickm=
aker's
about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged against
another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival candidates for a
pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of printing, and promising, and
proxying, and polling, and it appeared to have imparted great liveliness to=
all
concerned, except the pensioners--who were not elected yet.
I am very fond of being confided in by children
and am happy in being usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasio=
n it
gave me great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the
manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground that his
pocket-money was ‘boned’ from him. On my pointing out the great
impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his parent (for he ad=
ded
sulkily ‘By her!’), he pinched me and said, ‘Oh, then! No=
w!
Who are you! YOU wouldn't like it, I think? What does she make a sham for, =
and
pretend to give me money, and take it away again? Why do you call it my
allowance, and never let me spend it?’ These exasperating questions so
inflamed his mind and the minds of Oswald and Francis that they all pinched=
me
at once, and in a dreadfully expert way-- screwing up such little pieces of=
my
arms that I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamp=
ed
upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having the whol=
e of
his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to abstain from cakes as
well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we passed a pastry-coo=
k's
shop that he terrified me by becoming purple. I never underwent so much, bo=
th
in body and mind, in the course of a walk with young people as from these
unnaturally constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being
natural.
I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's ho=
use,
though it was one of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with
pigsties close to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the
doors growing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put=
to
catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked up with =
mud
into a little pond like a large dirt- pie. At the doors and windows some men
and women lounged or prowled about, and took little notice of us except to
laugh to one another or to say something as we passed about gentlefolks min=
ding
their own business and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes w=
ith
coming to look after other people's.
Mrs Pardiggle, leading the way with a great sh=
ow
of moral determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy ha=
bits
of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in s=
uch
a place), conducted us into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-fl=
oor
room of which we nearly filled. Besides ourselves, there were in this damp,
offensive room a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby=
by
the fire; a man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated,
lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man
fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of washing in =
very
dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in, and the woman seemed to
turn her face towards the fire as if to hide her bruised eye; nobody gave us
any welcome.
‘Well, my friends,’ said Mrs
Pardiggle, but her voice had not a friendly sound, I thought; it was much t=
oo
business-like and systematic. ‘How do you do, all of you? I am here
again. I told you, you couldn't tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, =
and am
true to my word.’
‘There an't,’ growled the man on t=
he
floor, whose head rested on his hand as he stared at us, ‘any more on=
you
to come in, is there?’
‘No, my friend,’ said Mrs Pardiggl=
e,
seating herself on one stool and knocking down another. ‘We are all h=
ere.’
‘Because I thought there warn't enough of
you, perhaps?’ said the man, with his pipe between his lips as he loo=
ked
round upon us.
The young man and the girl both laughed. Two
friends of the young man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood
there with their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
‘You can't tire me, good people,’ =
said
Mrs Pardiggle to these latter. ‘I enjoy hard work, and the harder you
make mine, the better I like it.’
‘Then make it easy for her!’ growl=
ed
the man upon the floor. ‘I wants it done, and over. I wants a end of
these liberties took with my place. I wants an end of being drawed like a
badger. Now you're a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--I =
know
what you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't got no occasion to be up=
to
it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, she IS a-washi=
n.
Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we drinks. How do you like it, and =
what
do you think of gin instead! An't my place dirty? Yes, it is dirty-- it's
nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty a=
nd
onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for th=
em,
and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I an't re=
ad the
little book wot you left. There an't nobody here as knows how to read it; a=
nd
if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me. It's a book fit for a babby, a=
nd
I'm not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I shouldn't nuss it. How ha=
ve I
been conducting of myself? Why, I've been drunk for three days; and I'da be=
en
drunk four if I'da had the money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? N=
o, I
don't never mean for to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I d=
id;
the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get that black eye? W=
hy,
I give it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a lie!’
He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say=
all
this, and he now turned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs Pardig=
gle,
who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure,
calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled o=
ut a
good book as if it were a constable's staff and took the whole family into
custody. I mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it as=
if
she were an inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-
house.
Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt
intrusive and out of place, and we both thought that Mrs Pardiggle would ha=
ve
got on infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking
possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took no no=
tice
of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog bark, which he usual=
ly
did when Mrs Pardiggle was most emphatic. We both felt painfully sensible t=
hat
between us and these people there was an iron barrier which could not be
removed by our new friend. By whom or how it could be removed, we did not k=
now,
but we knew that. Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen=
for
such auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so mu=
ch
tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had referred, we
acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr Jarndyce said he doubted if
Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had had no other on his desol=
ate
island.
We were much relieved, under these circumstanc=
es,
when Mrs Pardiggle left off.
The man on the floor, then turning his head ro=
und
again, said morosely, ‘Well! You've done, have you?’
‘For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am
never fatigued. I shall come to you again in your regular order,’
returned Mrs Pardiggle with demonstrative cheerfulness.
‘So long as you goes now,’ said he,
folding his arms and shutting his eyes with an oath, ‘you may do wot =
you
like!’
Mrs Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a litt=
le
vortex in the confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escape=
d.
Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others to foll=
ow
closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and all his house woul=
d be
improved when she saw them next, she then proceeded to another cottage. I h=
ope
it is not unkind in me to say that she certainly did make, in this as in
everything else, a show that was not conciliatory of doing charity by whole=
sale
and of dealing in it to a large extent.
She supposed that we were following her, but as
soon as the space was left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fi=
re
to ask if the baby were ill.
She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We=
had
observed before that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye =
with
her hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and
violence and ill treatment from the poor little child.
Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its
appearance, bent down to touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what
happened and drew her back. The child died.
‘Oh, Esther!’ cried Ada, sinking on
her knees beside it. ‘Look here! Oh, Esther, my love, the little thin=
g!
The suffering, quiet, pretty little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so so=
rry
for the mother. I never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, ba=
by!’
Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with
which she bent down weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have
softened any mother's heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her=
in
astonishment and then burst into tears.
Presently I took the light burden from her lap,
did what I could to make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it =
on a
shelf, and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the mot=
her,
and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children. She answered
nothing, but sat weeping--weeping very much.
When I turned, I found that the young man had
taken out the dog and was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry
eyes, but quiet. The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the
ground. The man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance,
but he was silent.
An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in
while I was glancing at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, &=
#8216;Jenny!
Jenny!’ The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman=
's
neck.
She also had upon her face and arms the marks =
of
ill usage. She had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; b=
ut
when she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no bea=
uty.
I say condoled, but her only words were ‘Jenny! Jenny!’ All the
rest was in the tone in which she said them.
I thought it very touching to see these two wo=
men,
coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one
another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each
was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of su=
ch
people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little kn=
own,
excepting to themselves and God.
We felt it better to withdraw and leave them
uninterrupted. We stole out quietly and without notice from any one except =
the
man. He was leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there =
was
scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want to hide
that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he did, and thanked =
him.
He made no answer.
Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and
Richard, whom we found at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (thou=
gh
he said to me, when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we
arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our visit =
at
the brick-maker's house. We said as little as we could to Mr Jarndyce, but =
the
wind changed directly.
Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking- house, where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial company. The si= ster was standing laughing and talking with some other young women at the corner= of the row of cottages, but she seemed ashamed and turned away as we went by.<= o:p>
We left our escort within sight of the
brickmaker's dwelling and proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door,=
we
found the woman who had brought such consolation with her standing there
looking anxiously out.
‘It's you, young ladies, is it?’ s=
he
said in a whisper. ‘I'm a- watching for my master. My heart's in my
mouth. If he was to catch me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me.=
217;
‘Do you mean your husband?’ said I=
.
‘Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, q=
uite
worn out. She's scarcely had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven
days and nights, except when I've been able to take it for a minute or two.=
’
As she gave way for us, she went softly in and=
put
what we had brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No ef=
fort
had been made to clean the room--it seemed in its nature almost hopeless of
being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much solemnity diffused
itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and neatly dressed in some
fragments of white linen; and on my handkerchief, which still covered the p=
oor
baby, a little bunch of sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred
hands, so lightly, so tenderly!
‘May heaven reward you!’ we said to
her. ‘You are a good woman.’
‘Me, young ladies?’ she returned w=
ith
surprise. ‘Hush! Jenny, Jenny!’
The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. =
The
sound of the familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once mo=
re.
How little I thought, when I raised my
handkerchief to look upon the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a h=
alo
shine around the child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her hea=
d--
how little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come to=
lie
after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only thought that perh=
aps
the Angel of the child might not be all unconscious of the woman who replac=
ed
it with so compassionate a hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when=
we
had taken leave, and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening =
in
terror for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, ‘Jenny, Je=
nny!’
I don't know how it is I seem to be always wri=
ting
about myself. I mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to
think about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself
coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, ‘Dear, dear, =
you
tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn't!’ but it is all of no u=
se.
I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that if these pages
contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it must be because I have
really something to do with them and can't be kept out. My darling and I re=
ad
together, and worked, and practised, and found so much employment for our t=
ime
that the winter days flew by us like bright-winged birds. Generally in the
afternoons, and always in the evenings, Richard gave us his company. Althou=
gh
he was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was ve=
ry
fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it,
and I had better say it at once. I had never seen any young people falling =
in
love before, but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course=
, or
show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure and us=
ed
to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within myself while I was
sitting at work whether I was not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do =
was
to be quiet, and I was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too,=
so
far as any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they reli=
ed
more and more upon me as they took more and more to one another was so char=
ming
that I had great difficulty in not showing how it interested me.
‘Our dear little old woman is such a cap=
ital
old woman,’ Richard would say, coming up to meet me in the garden ear=
ly,
with his pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, ‘that=
I
can't get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day-- grinding awa=
y at
those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down dale, all t=
he
country round, like a highwayman--it does me so much good to come and have a
steady walk with our comfortable friend, that here I am again!’
‘You know, Dame Durden, dear,’ Ada
would say at night, with her head upon my shoulder and the firelight shinin=
g in
her thoughtful eyes, ‘I don't want to talk when we come upstairs here.
Only to sit a little while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to
hear the wind and remember the poor sailors at sea--’
Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. =
We
had talked it over very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the
inclination of his childhood for the sea. Mr Jarndyce had written to a rela=
tion
of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in Richard's
favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a gracious manner that =
he
would be happy to advance the prospects of the young gentleman if it should
ever prove to be within his power, which was not at all probable, and that =
my
Lady sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly
remembered that she was allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he
would ever do his duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote
himself.
‘So I apprehend it's pretty clear,’
said Richard to me, ‘that I shall have to work my own way. Never mind!
Plenty of people have had to do that before now, and have done it. I only w=
ish
I had the command of a clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off=
the
Chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our ca=
use.
He'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!’
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety t=
hat
hardly ever flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd way, for
prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money in a singular ma=
nner
which I don't think I can better explain than by reverting for a moment to =
our
loan to Mr Skimpole.
Mr Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either
from Mr Skimpole himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my
hands with instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest=
to
Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which Richard
justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number of times he tal=
ked
to me as if he had saved or realized that amount, would form a sum in simple
addition.
‘My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?R=
17;
he said to me when he wanted, without the least consideration, to bestow fi=
ve
pounds on the brickmaker. ‘I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses'
business.’
‘How was that?’ said I.
‘Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was
quite content to get rid of and never expected to see any more. You don't d=
eny
that?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘Very well! Then I came into possession =
of
ten pounds--’
‘The same ten pounds,’ I hinted.
‘That has nothing to do with it!’ returned Richard. ‘I have got ten pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to spend it without being particular.’<= o:p>
In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded=
out
of the sacrifice of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no
good, he carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it. ‘Let me see=
!’
he would say. ‘I saved five pounds out of the brickmaker's affair, so=
if
I have a good rattle to London and back in a post-chaise and put that down =
at
four pounds, I shall have saved one. And it's a very good thing to save one,
let me tell you: a penny saved is a penny got!’
I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a
nature as there possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst =
of all
his wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a few
weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown itself abunda=
ntly
even without Ada's influence; but with it, he became one of the most winnin=
g of
companions, always so ready to be interested and always so happy, sanguine,=
and
light-hearted. I am sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, =
and
talking with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling
deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each shyly thin=
king
that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps not yet suspected even =
by
the other--I am sure that I was scarcely less enchanted than they were and
scarcely less pleased with the pretty dream.
We were going on in this way, when one morning=
at
breakfast Mr Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription,
said, ‘From Boythorn? Aye, aye!’ and opened and read it with
evident pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about half-=
way
through, that Boythorn was ‘coming down’ on a visit. Now who was
Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too--I am sure I di=
d,
for one--would Boythorn at all interfere with what was going forward?
‘I went to school with this fellow, Lawr=
ence
Boythorn,’ said Mr Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the
table, ‘more than five and forty years ago. He was then the most
impetuous boy in the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was th=
en
the loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the
heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest and
sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.’
‘In stature, sir?’ asked Richard.<= o:p>
‘Pretty well, Rick, in that respect,R=
17;
said Mr Jarndyce; ‘being some ten years older than I and a couple of
inches taller, with his head thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart
chest squared, his hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! There's =
no
simile for his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of=
the
house shake.’
As Mr Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his
friend Boythorn, we observed the favourable omen that there was not the lea=
st
indication of any change in the wind.
‘But it's the inside of the man, the warm
heart of the man, the passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick-=
-and
Ada, and little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor--that I
speak of,’ he pursued. ‘His language is as sounding as his voic=
e.
He is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his
condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre from w=
hat
he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with some people. There=
! I
tell you no more of him beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him ta=
ke
me under his protection, for he has never forgotten that I was a low boy at
school and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's
teeth out (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man,’ to m=
e, ‘will
be here this afternoon, my dear.’
I took care that the necessary preparations we=
re
made for Mr Boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with
some curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear. The
dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was put back an
hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze when t=
he
hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall resounded with these words, utte=
red
with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone: ‘We have been
misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the
turning to the right instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable
scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father must have been a most consum=
mate
villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot without=
the
least remorse!’
‘Did he do it on purpose?’ Mr Jarn=
dyce
inquired.
‘I have not the slightest doubt that the
scoundrel has passed his whole existence in misdirecting travellers!’
returned the other. ‘By my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I
had ever beheld when he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And
yet I stood before that fellow face to face and didn't knock his brains out=
!’
‘Teeth, you mean?’ said Mr Jarndyc=
e.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Mr Lawrence =
Boythorn,
really making the whole house vibrate. ‘What, you have not forgotten =
it
yet! Ha, ha, ha! And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul,=
the
countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image of perf=
idy,
cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels.=
If
I were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets to-morrow, I wo=
uld
fell him like a rotten tree!’
‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Mr
Jarndyce. ‘Now, will you come upstairs?’
‘By my soul, Jarndyce,’ returned h=
is
guest, who seemed to refer to his watch, ‘if you had been married, I
would have turned back at the garden-gate and gone away to the remotest sum=
mits
of the Himalaya Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this=
unseasonable
hour.’
‘Not quite so far, I hope?’ said Mr
Jarndyce.
‘By my life and honour, yes!’ cried
the visitor. ‘I wouldn't be guilty of the audacious insolence of keep=
ing
a lady of the house waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I
would infinitely rather destroy myself--infinitely rather!’
Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presentl=
y we
heard him in his bedroom thundering ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ and again =
216;Ha,
ha, ha!’ until the flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch=
the
contagion and to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard h=
im
laugh.
We all conceived a prepossession in his favour,
for there was a sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy
voice, and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he
spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go off like
blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared to have it so
confirmed by his appearance when Mr Jarndyce presented him. He was not only=
a
very handsome old gentleman--upright and stalwart as he had been described =
to
us-- with a massive grey head, a fine composure of face when silent, a figu=
re
that might have become corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest
that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double =
chin
but for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist;
but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his
face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it see=
med
so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself exactly as he
was--incapable, as Richard said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing
away with those blank great guns because he carried no small arms
whatever--that really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure a=
s he
sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led b=
y Mr
Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up his head like a
bloodhound and gave out that tremendous ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
‘You have brought your bird with you, I
suppose?’ said Mr Jarndyce.
‘By heaven, he is the most astonishing b=
ird
in Europe!’ replied the other. ‘He IS the most wonderful creatu=
re!
I wouldn't take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity =
for
his sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachme=
nt,
a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing bir=
ds
that ever lived!’
The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame that he was brought down by Mr Boythorn's man, on h= is forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's head. To hear Mr Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable= and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched= on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, I thought.<= o:p>
‘By my soul, Jarndyce,’ he said, v=
ery
gently holding up a bit of bread to the canary to peck at, ‘if I were=
in
your place I would seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow
morning and shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bon=
es
rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair mea=
ns
or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do it for you with the
greatest satisfaction!’ (All this time the very small canary was eati=
ng
out of his hand.)
‘I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is
hardly at such a point at present,’ returned Mr Jarndyce, laughing, &=
#8216;that
it would be greatly advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench=
and
the whole bar.’
‘There never was such an infernal cauldr=
on
as that Chancery on the face of the earth!’ said Mr Boythorn. ‘=
Nothing
but a mine below it on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules,
and precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, =
high
and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its fa=
ther
the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of
gunpowder, would reform it in the least!’
It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic
gravity with which he recommended this strong measure of reform. When we
laughed, he threw up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole
country seemed to echo to his ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ It had not the least
effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who
hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now on that,
turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no more than anot=
her
bird.
‘But how do you and your neighbour get on
about the disputed right of way?’ said Mr Jarndyce. ‘You are not
free from the toils of the law yourself!’
‘The fellow has brought actions against =
ME
for trespass, and I have brought actions against HIM for trespass,’
returned Mr Boythorn. ‘By heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing=
. It
is morally impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir
Lucifer.’
‘Complimentary to our distant relation!&=
#8217;
said my guardian laughingly to Ada and Richard.
‘I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr
Carstone's pardon,’ resumed our visitor, ‘if I were not reassur=
ed
by seeing in the fair face of the lady and the smile of the gentleman that =
it
is quite unnecessary and that they keep their distant relation at a comfort=
able
distance.’
‘Or he keeps us,’ suggested Richar=
d.
‘By my soul,’ exclaimed Mr Boythor=
n,
suddenly firing another volley, ‘that fellow is, and his father was, =
and
his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed
numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station=
of
life but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly
conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should not shut=
up
my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and living in a hundred
Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carvin=
g.
The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me 'Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr Lawrence Boythor=
n,
and has to call his attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old
parsonage-house, now the property of Mr Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir Leicester=
's
right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of chesney Wold, and that=
Sir
Leicester finds it convenient to close up the same.' I write to the fellow,=
'Mr
Lawrence Boythorn presents his compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Barone=
t,
and has to call HIS attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole =
of
Sir Leicester Dedlock's positions on every possible subject and has to add,=
in
reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who
may undertake to do it.' The fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one=
eye
to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-en=
gine
until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate=
in
the night. I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidon=
s to
come over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man traps, =
fire
split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine--resolve to free
mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those lurking
ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I bring actions for trespass. He
brings actions for assault and battery; I defend them and continue to assau=
lt
and batter. Ha, ha, ha!’
To hear him say all this with unimaginable ene=
rgy,
one might have thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very =
same
time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly smoothing i=
ts
feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest. To h=
ear
him laugh and see the broad good nature of his face then, one might have
supposed that he had not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, b=
ut
that his whole existence was a summer joke.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘no closi=
ng
up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though I willingly confess,’ here he
softened in a moment, ‘that Lady Dedlock is the most accomplished lad=
y in
the world, to whom I would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no bar=
onet
with a head seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at
twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and presumptuous cox=
comb
of a commanding officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight
waist--and got broke for it--is not the man to be walked over by all the Sir
Lucifers, dead or alive, locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!’
‘Nor the man to allow his junior to be
walked over either?’ said my guardian.
‘Most assuredly not!’ said Mr
Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder with an air of protection that had
something serious in it, though he laughed. ‘He will stand by the low
boy, always. Jarndyce, you may rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass=
--
with apologies to Miss Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I h=
ave
pursued so dry a subject--is there nothing for me from your men Kenge and
Carboy?’
‘I think not, Esther?’ said Mr
Jarndyce.
‘Nothing, guardian.’
‘Much obliged!’ said Mr Boythorn. =
‘Had
no need to ask, after even my slight experience of Miss Summerson's foretho=
ught
for every one about her.’ (They all encouraged me; they were determin=
ed
to do it.) ‘I inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course
have not yet been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent =
down
here. I dare say they will report progress to- morrow morning.’
I saw him so often in the course of the evenin=
g,
which passed very pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest =
and
a satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat at a
little distance from the piano listening to the music--and he had small
occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music, for his face sh=
owed
it--that I asked my guardian as we sat at the backgammon board whether Mr
Boythorn had ever been married.
‘No,’ said he. ‘No.’
‘But he meant to be!’ said I.
‘How did you find out that?’ he
returned with a smile. ‘Why, guardian,’ I explained, not without
reddening a little at hazarding what was in my thoughts, ‘there is
something so tender in his manner, after all, and he is so very courtly and
gentle to us, and --’
Mr Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was
sitting as I have just described him.
I said no more.
‘You are right, little woman,’ he
answered. ‘He was all but married once. Long ago. And once.’
‘Did the lady die?’
‘No--but she died to him. That time has =
had
its influence on all his later life. Would you suppose him to have a head a=
nd a
heart full of romance yet?’
‘I think, guardian, I might have supposed
so. But it is easy to say that when you have told me so.’
‘He has never since been what he might h=
ave
been,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘and now you see him in his age with no
one near him but his servant and his little yellow friend. It's your throw,=
my
dear!’
I felt, from my guardian's manner, that beyond
this point I could not pursue the subject without changing the wind. I
therefore forbore to ask any further questions. I was interested, but not
curious. I thought a little while about this old love story in the night, w=
hen
I was awakened by Mr Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that very
difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested with the grace=
s of
youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded, and dreamed of the days wh=
en I
lived in my godmother's house. I am not sufficiently acquainted with such
subjects to know whether it is at all remarkable that I almost always dream=
ed
of that period of my life.
With the morning there came a letter from Mess=
rs.
Kenge and Carboy to Mr Boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would
wait upon him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bi=
lls,
and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact as
possible, I remained at home while Mr Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard took advan=
tage
of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr Boythorn was to wait for
Kenge and Carboy's clerk and then was to go on foot to meet them on their
return.
Well! I was full of business, examining
tradesmen's books, adding up columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I =
dare
say making a great bustle about it when Mr Guppy was announced and shown in=
. I
had had some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young
gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see him,
because he was associated with my present happiness.
I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly
smart. He had an entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat,
lilac-kid gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house =
flower
in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. Besides whi=
ch,
he quite scented the dining-room with bear's-grease and other perfumery. He
looked at me with an attention that quite confused me when I begged him to =
take
a seat until the servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and
uncrossing his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant r=
ide,
and hoped that Mr Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found him
looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way.
When the request was brought to him that he wo=
uld
go upstairs to Mr Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch
prepared for him when he came down, of which Mr Jarndyce hoped he would
partake. He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, &=
#8216;Shall
I have the honour of finding you here, miss?’ I replied yes, I should=
be
there; and he went out with a bow and another look.
I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was
evidently much embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do wo=
uld
be to wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave h=
im
to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some time on the
table. The interview with Mr Boythorn was a long one, and a stormy one too,=
I
should think, for although his room was at some distance I heard his loud v=
oice
rising every now and then like a high wind, and evidently blowing perfect
broadsides of denunciation.
At last Mr Guppy came back, looking something =
the
worse for the conference. ‘My eye, miss,’ he said in a low voic=
e, ‘he's
a Tartar!’
‘Pray take some refreshment, sir,’
said I.
Mr Guppy sat down at the table and began nervo=
usly
sharpening the carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I
felt quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The
sharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on me to
raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which he seemed to
labour, of not being able to leave off.
He immediately looked at the dish and began to
carve.
‘What will you take yourself, miss? You'=
ll
take a morsel of something?’
‘No, thank you,’ said I.
‘Shan't I give you a piece of anything at
all, miss?’ said Mr Guppy, hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
‘Nothing, thank you,’ said I. R=
16;I
have only waited to see that you have everything you want. Is there anythin=
g I
can order for you?’
‘No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm
sure. I've everything that I can require to make me comfortable--at least
I--not comfortable-- I'm never that.’ He drank off two more glasses of
wine, one after another.
I thought I had better go.
‘I beg your pardon, miss!’ said Mr
Guppy, rising when he saw me rise. ‘But would you allow me the favour=
of
a minute's private conversation?’
Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
‘What follows is without prejudice, miss=
?’
said Mr Guppy, anxiously bringing a chair towards my table.
‘I don't understand what you mean,’
said I, wondering.
‘It's one of our law terms, miss. You wo=
n't
make any use of it to my detriment at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If o=
ur
conversation shouldn't lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to =
be
prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in total
confidence.’
‘I am at a loss, sir,’ said I, =
216;to
imagine what you can have to communicate in total confidence to me, whom you
have never seen but once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury.&=
#8217;
‘Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it--that's
quite sufficient.’ All this time Mr Guppy was either planing his fore=
head
with his handkerchief or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the
palm of his right. ‘If you would excuse my taking another glass of wi=
ne,
miss, I think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke th=
at
cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant.’
He did so, and came back again. I took the
opportunity of moving well behind my table.
‘You wouldn't allow me to offer you one,
would you miss?’ said Mr Guppy, apparently refreshed.
‘Not any,’ said I.
‘Not half a glass?’ said Mr Guppy.=
‘Quarter?
No! Then, to proceed. My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carbo=
y's,
is two pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it=
was
one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened period. A rise of
five has since taken place, and a further rise of five is guaranteed at the
expiration of a term not exceeding twelve months from the present date. My
mother has a little property, which takes the form of a small life annuity,
upon which she lives in an independent though unassuming manner in the Old
Street Road. She is eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never
interferes, is all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her
failings--as who has not?--but I never knew her do it when company was pres=
ent,
at which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt liquors=
. My
own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is lowly, but airy, =
open
at the back, and considered one of the 'ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! =
In
the mildest language, I adore you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I
may say) to file a declaration--to make an offer!’
Mr Guppy went down on his knees. I was well be=
hind
my table and not much frightened. I said, ‘Get up from that ridiculous
position immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise
and ring the bell!’
‘Hear me out, miss!’ said Mr Guppy,
folding his hands.
‘I cannot consent to hear another word, =
sir,’
I returned, ‘Unless you get up from the carpet directly and go and sit
down at the table as you ought to do if you have any sense at all.’
He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did s=
o.
‘Yet what a mockery it is, miss,’ =
he
said with his hand upon his heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy
manner over the tray, ‘to be stationed behind food at such a moment. =
The
soul recoils from food at such a moment, miss.’
‘I beg you to conclude,’ said I; &=
#8216;you
have asked me to hear you out, and I beg you to conclude.’
‘I will, miss,’ said Mr Guppy. =
216;As
I love and honour, so likewise I obey. Would that I could make thee the sub=
ject
of that vow before the shrine!’
‘That is quite impossible,’ said I=
, ‘and
entirely out of the question.’
‘I am aware,’ said Mr Guppy, leani=
ng
forward over the tray and regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my
eyes were not directed to him, with his late intent look, ‘I am aware
that in a worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don't ring--I have been brought u=
p in
a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of general practice. Though a
young man, I have ferreted out evidence, got up cases, and seen lots of lif=
e.
Blest with your hand, what means might I not find of advancing your interes=
ts
and pushing your fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning =
you?
I know nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your confidenc=
e,
and you set me on?’
I told him that he addressed my interest or wh=
at
he supposed to be my interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my in=
clination,
and he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go away
immediately.
‘Cruel miss,’ said Mr Guppy, ̵=
6;hear
but another word! I think you must have seen that I was struck with those
charms on the day when I waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have
remarked that I could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up t=
he
steps of the 'ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was well
meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have walked up a=
nd
down of an evening opposite Jellyby's house only to look upon the bricks th=
at
once contained thee. This out of to- day, quite an unnecessary out so far as
the attendance, which was its pretended object, went, was planned by me alo=
ne
for thee alone. If I speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and =
my
respectful wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it.’
‘I should be pained, Mr Guppy,’ sa=
id
I, rising and putting my hand upon the bell-rope, ‘to do you or any o=
ne
who was sincere the injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however
disagreeably expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your
good opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank =
you.
I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I hope,’ I
think I added, without very well knowing what I said, ‘that you will =
now
go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish and attend to Messr=
s.
Kenge and Carboy's business.’
‘Half a minute, miss!’ cried Mr Gu=
ppy,
checking me as I was about to ring. ‘This has been without prejudice?=
’
‘I will never mention it,’ said I,=
‘unless
you should give me future occasion to do so.’
‘A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you
should think better at any time, however distant--THAT'S no consequence, fo=
r my
feelings can never alter--of anything I have said, particularly what might I
not do, Mr William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or dead
(of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs Guppy, three hund=
red
and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient.’
I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr Gupp=
y,
laying his written card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed.
Raising my eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he =
had
passed the door.
I sat there for another hour or more, finishin=
g my
books and payments and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged =
my
desk, and put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thou=
ght
I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went upstairs t=
o my
own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it and then surpri=
sed
myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter
for a little while and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touch=
ed
than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in t=
he
garden.
On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that =
is
to say, more particularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr Snagsby, law-
stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's Court, at most
times a shady place, Mr Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of le=
gal
process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft,
brown, white, whitey- brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pen=
s,
ink, India- rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red =
tape
and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in str=
ing
boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass and leaden--pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, =
and
other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, =
ever
since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer. On that
occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by the new inscriptio=
n in
fresh paint, PEFFER
Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is
not expected there, for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in =
the
churchyard of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney- coaches
roaring past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in Cook's
Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the sanguine cock in the
cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, whose ideas of daylight it w=
ould
be curious to ascertain, since he knows from his personal observation next =
to
nothing about it--if Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Cou=
rt,
which no law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
and no one is the worse or wiser.
In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of
Snagsby's ‘time’ of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in
the same law- stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, somethi=
ng
too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like a sharp
autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The Cook's Courtiers
had a rumour flying among them that the mother of this niece did, in her
daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a solicitude that her figure sho=
uld
approach perfection, lace her up every morning with her maternal foot again=
st
the bed-post for a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibi=
ted
internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held, had
mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever of the many
tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it either never reached or
never influenced the ears of young Snagsby, who, having wooed and won its f=
air
subject on his arrival at man's estate, entered into two partnerships at on=
ce.
So now, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr Snagsby and the niece are one;=
and
the niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ, is
unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.
Mr and Mrs Snagsby are not only one bone and o=
ne
flesh, but, to the neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appeari=
ng
to proceed from Mrs Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr
Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, =
is
rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head and a scrub=
by
clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends to meekness and obes=
ity.
As he stands at his door in Cook's Court in his grey shop-coat and black ca=
lico
sleeves, looking up at the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop
with a heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with =
his
two 'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From bene=
ath
his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there
frequently arise complainings and lamentations in the voice already mention=
ed;
and haply, on some occasions when these reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr
Snagsby mentions to the 'prentices, ‘I think my little woman is a-giv=
ing
it to Guster!’
This proper name, so used by Mr Snagsby, has
before now sharpened the wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ough=
t to
be the name of Mrs Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character. It is,
however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty shillings per
annum and a very small box indifferently filled with clothing, of a lean yo=
ung
woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to have been christened Augusta) w=
ho,
although she was farmed or contracted for during her growing time by an ami=
able
benefactor of his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
developed under the most favourable circumstances, ‘has fits,’
which the parish can't account for.
Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, =
but
looking a round ten years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawbac=
k of
fits, and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron s=
aint
that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, or the
copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be near her at the =
time
of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a satisfaction to the parents=
and
guardians of the 'prentices, who feel that there is little danger of her
inspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to =
Mrs
Snagsby, who can always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr
Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer's establish=
ment
is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes the li=
ttle
drawing- room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers
and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom. The v=
iew
it commands of Cook's Court at one end (not to mention a squint into Cursit=
or
Street) and of Coavinses' the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she
regards as a prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in
oil--and plenty of it too--of Mr Snagsby looking at Mrs Snagsby and of Mrs
Snagsby looking at Mr Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or
Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations.
Mr Snagsby refers everything not in the practi=
cal
mysteries of the business to Mrs Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches=
the
tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licens=
es Mr
Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she
thinks fit to provide for dinner, insomuch that she is the high standard of
comparison among the neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on bo=
th
sides, and even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitu=
ally
call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives=
')
position and Mrs Snagsby's, and their (the husbands') behaviour and Mr
Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like about Cook's Court and skimming in
and out at everybody's windows, does say that Mrs Snagsby is jealous and
inquisitive and that Mr Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home,=
and
that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even obser=
ved
that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining exa=
mple
in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with greater
superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more than suspected=
of
laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. But these vague
whisperings may arise from Mr Snagsby's being in his way rather a meditative
and poetical man, loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to
observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge abo=
ut
the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that
there were old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now und=
er
that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and Master=
s of
the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of
telling the two 'prentices how he
The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, =
but
is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr Snagsby standing at
his shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow flies
straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into Lincoln's Inn
Fields.
Here, in a large house, formerly a house of st=
ate,
lives Mr Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But =
its
roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still remain; and even its pai=
nted
ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among
balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the
head ache--as would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here,
among his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr Tulkinghorn,
when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the
earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day, quiet at his table. An oyster =
of
the old school whom nobody can open.
Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment =
in
the dusk of the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned, mahogany-
and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables with spindle-legs =
and
dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the holders of great titles in t=
he
last generation or the last but one, environ him. A thick and dingy
Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended by two candles in
old-fashioned silver candlesticks that give a very insufficient light to his
large room. The titles on the backs of his books have retired into the bind=
ing;
everything that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few lo=
ose
papers are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring to =
it.
With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of sealing-wax he is
silently and slowly working out whatever train of indecision is in his mind.
Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now the red bit of sealing-wax, now =
the
black bit. That's not it. Mr Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin
again.
Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with
foreshortened Allegory staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop
upon him, and he cutting it dead, Mr Tulkinghorn has at once his house and
office. He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened with
business. Mr Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no clerks. He is a
great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. His clients want HIM; =
he
is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be drawn are drawn by special-
pleaders in the temple on mysterious instructions; fair copies that he requ=
ires
to be made are made at the stationers', expense being no consideration. The
middle-aged man in the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage
than any crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, =
the
other inkstand top, the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the
right, you to the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out =
now
or never. Now! Mr Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on his =
hat,
puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the middle-aged man out =
at
elbows, ‘I shall be back presently.’ Very rarely tells him anyt=
hing
more explicit.
Mr Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not qui=
te
so straight, but nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's, La=
w-
Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in all its
branches, &c., &c., &c.
It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in t=
he
afternoon, and a balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hov=
ers
about Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one and
supper at half-past nine. Mr Snagsby was about to descend into the subterra=
nean
regions to take tea when he looked out of his door just now and saw the crow
who was out late.
‘Master at home?’ Guster is minding
the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the kitchen with Mr and Mrs Snagsb=
y; consequently,
the robe-maker's two daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in t=
he
two second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely awakening =
the
unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't grow, and never would, =
and
it is confidently thought, never will.
‘Master at home?’ says Mr Tulkingh=
orn.
Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him.
Guster disappears, glad to get out of the shop, which she regards with ming=
led
dread and veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great tortu=
re
of the law--a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
Mr Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, =
and
chewing. Bolts a bit of bread and butter. Says, ‘Bless my soul, sir! =
Mr
Tulkinghorn!’
‘I want half a word with you, Snagsby.=
8217;
‘Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't
you send your young man round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir.=
217;
Snagsby has brightened in a moment.
The confined room, strong of parchment-grease,=
is
warehouse, counting-house, and copying-office. Mr Tulkinghorn sits, facing
round, on a stool at the desk.
‘Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby.’<= o:p>
‘Yes, sir.’ Mr Snagsby turns up the
gas and coughs behind his hand, modestly anticipating profit. Mr Snagsby, a=
s a
timid man, is accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to =
save
words.
‘You copied some affidavits in that cause
for me lately.’
‘Yes, sir, we did.’
‘There was one of them,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, carelessly feeling-- tight, unopenable oyster of the old
school!--in the wrong coat- pocket, ‘the handwriting of which is
peculiar, and I rather like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had=
it
about me, I looked in to ask you--but I haven't got it. No matter, any othe=
r time
will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this.’
‘Who copied this, sir?’ says Mr
Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat on the desk, and separating all the shee=
ts
at once with a twirl and a twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers=
. ‘We
gave this out, sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just=
at
that time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to my
book.’
Mr Snagsby takes his book down from the safe,
makes another bolt of the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stop=
ped
short, eyes the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling
down a page of the book, ‘Jewby--Packer--Jarndyce.’
‘Jarndyce! Here we are, sir,’ says=
Mr
Snagsby. ‘To be sure! I might have remembered it. This was given out,
sir, to a writer who lodges just over on the opposite side of the lane.R=
17;
Mr Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it be= fore the law- stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.<= o:p>
‘WHAT do you call him? Nemo?’ says=
Mr
Tulkinghorn. ‘Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the
Wednesday night at eight o'clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half
after nine.’
‘Nemo!’ repeats Mr Tulkinghorn. =
8216;Nemo
is Latin for no one.’
‘It must be English for some one, sir, I think,’ Mr Snagsby submits with his deferential cough. ‘It is a person's name. Here it is, you see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesd= ay night, eight o'clock; brought in Thursday morning, half after nine.’<= o:p>
The tail of Mr Snagsby's eye becomes conscious=
of
the head of Mrs Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
deserting his tea. Mr Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs Snagsby=
, as
who should say, ‘My dear, a customer!’
‘Half after nine, sir,’ repeats Mr
Snagsby. ‘Our law-writers, who live by job-work, are a queer lot; and
this may not be his name, but it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir,
that he gives it in a written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule
Office, and the King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth.
You know the kind of document, sir--wanting employ?’
Mr Tulkinghorn glances through the little wind=
ow
at the back of Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in
Coavinses' windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows =
of
several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr Snagsby t=
akes
the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance over his shoulder at=
his
little woman and to make apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect: =
‘Tul-king-horn--
rich--in-flu-en-tial!’
‘Have you given this man work before?=
217;
asks Mr Tulkinghorn.
‘Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours.̵=
7;
‘Thinking of more important matters, I
forget where you said he lived?’
‘Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodge=
s at
a--’ Mr Snagsby makes another bolt, as if the bit of bread and buffer
were insurmountable ‘--at a rag and bottle shop.’
‘Can you show me the place as I go back?=
’
‘With the greatest pleasure, sir!’=
Mr Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey
coat, pulls on his black coat, takes his hat from its peg. ‘Oh! Here =
is
my little woman!’ he says aloud. ‘My dear, will you be so kind =
as
to tell one of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane
with Mr Tulkinghorn? Mrs Snagsby, sir--I shan't be two minutes, my love!=
217;
Mrs Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind
the counter, peeps at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the b=
ack
office, refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently
curious.
‘You will find that the place is rough, =
sir,’
says Mr Snagsby, walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow
pavement to the lawyer; ‘and the party is very rough. But they're a w=
ild
lot in general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never
wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long as ever
you like.’
It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have
acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's
letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against
plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the general
crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of
obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life; diving thro=
ugh
law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is =
made
of nobody knows what and collects about us nobody knows whence or how-- we =
only
knowing in general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to
shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and bottle s=
hop
and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the
shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to=
all
whom it may concern, by one Krook.
‘This is where he lives, sir,’ says
the law-stationer.
‘This is where he lives, is it?’ s=
ays
the lawyer unconcernedly. ‘Thank you.’
‘Are you not going in, sir?’
‘No, thank you, no; I am going on to the
Fields at present. Good evening. Thank you!’ Mr Snagsby lifts his hat=
and
returns to his little woman and his tea.
But Mr Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Field=
s at
present. He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr Kro=
ok,
and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so i=
n the
windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The o=
ld
man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand.
‘Pray is your lodger within?’
‘Male or female, sir?’ says Mr Kro=
ok.
‘Male. The person who does copying.̵=
7;
Mr Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him =
by
sight. Has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
‘Did you wish to see him, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘It's what I seldom do myself,’ sa=
ys Mr
Krook with a grin. ‘Shall I call him down? But it's a weak chance if =
he'd
come, sir!’
‘I'll go up to him, then,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn.
‘Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up
there!’ Mr Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the
staircase, looking after Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘Hi-hi!’ he says when =
Mr
Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rai=
l.
The cat expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.
‘Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to
visitors, my lady! You know what they say of my lodger?’ whispers Kro=
ok,
going up a step or two.
‘What do they say of him?’
‘They say he has sold himself to the ene=
my,
but you and I know better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lod=
ger
is so black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that barga=
in
as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!’
Mr Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He
comes to the dark door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer,
opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
The air of the room is almost bad enough to ha=
ve
extinguished it if he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, =
and
grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle a=
s if
poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chi=
mney
stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness marked with a rain of in=
k.
In another corner a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs serves =
for
cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the che=
eks
of a starved man. The floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to sh=
reds
of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness=
of
the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together, and through the=
two
gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in--the banshee of the=
man
upon the bed.
For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusi=
on
of dirty patchwork, lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer,
hesitating just within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in s=
hirt
and trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness=
of
a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of its wick (still
burning) has doubled over and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His h=
air
is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too,
and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as
the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what
fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general
sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into =
the
lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
‘Hallo, my friend!’ he cries, and
strikes his iron candlestick against the door.
He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a
little turned away, but his eyes are surely open.
‘Hallo, my friend!’ he cries again=
. ‘Hallo!
Hallo!’
As he rattles on the door, the candle which has
drooped so long goes out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in=
the
shutters staring down upon the bed.
A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he st=
ands
in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start and say, ‘What's that?&=
#8217;
‘It's me,’ returns the old man of =
the
house, whose breath is in his ear. ‘Can't you wake him?’
‘No.’
‘What have you done with your candle?=
217;
‘It's gone out. Here it is.’
Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over =
the
red embers, and tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spar=
e,
and his endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop,
the old man departs. Mr Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does =
not
await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside.
The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as
Krook comes slowly up with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. ̵=
6;Does
the man generally sleep like this?’ inquired the lawyer in a low voic=
e. ‘Hi!
I don't know,’ says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.=
‘I
know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself very close.=
’
Thus whispering, they both go in together. As =
the
light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. No=
t so
the eyes upon the bed.
‘God save us!’ exclaims Mr
Tulkinghorn. ‘He is dead!’ Krook drops the heavy hand he has ta=
ken
up so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside.
They look at one another for a moment.
‘Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Fli=
te
up the stairs, sir. Here's poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?=
’
says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's
wings.
Mr Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and call=
s, ‘Miss
Flite! Flite! Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!’ Krook follows
him with his eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to t=
he
old portmanteau and steal back again.
‘Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Ru=
n!’
So Mr Krook addresses a crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who
appears and vanishes in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy
medical man brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a b=
road
Scotch tongue.
‘Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye,’ says=
the
medical man, looking up at them after a moment's examination. ‘He's j=
ust
as dead as Phairy!’
Mr Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmantea=
u)
inquires if he has been dead any time.
‘Any time, sir?’ says the medical
gentleman. ‘It's probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours.=
8217;
‘About that time, I should say,’
observes a dark young man on the other side of the bed.
‘Air you in the maydickle prayfession
yourself, sir?’ inquires the first.
The dark young man says yes.
‘Then I'll just tak' my depairture,̵=
7;
replies the other, ‘for I'm nae gude here!’ With which remark he
finishes his brief attendance and returns to finish his dinner.
The dark young surgeon passes the candle across
and across the face and carefully examines the law-writer, who has establis=
hed
his pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
‘I knew this person by sight very well,&=
#8217;
says he. ‘He has purchased opium of me for the last year and a half. =
Was
anybody present related to him?’ glancing round upon the three
bystanders.
‘I was his landlord,’ grimly answe=
rs
Krook, taking the candle from the surgeon's outstretched hand. ‘He to=
ld
me once I was the nearest relation he had.’
‘He has died,’ says the surgeon, &=
#8216;of
an over-dose of opium, there is no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured wi=
th
it. There is enough here now,’ taking an old tea-pot from Mr Krook, &=
#8216;to
kill a dozen people.’
‘Do you think he did it on purpose?̵=
7;
asks Krook.
‘Took the over-dose?’
‘Yes!’ Krook almost smacks his lips
with the unction of a horrible interest.
‘I can't say. I should think it unlikely=
, as
he has been in the habit of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very
poor, I suppose?’
‘I suppose he was. His room--don't look
rich,’ says Krook, who might have changed eyes with his cat, as he ca=
sts
his sharp glance around. ‘But I have never been in it since he had it,
and he was too close to name his circumstances to me.’
‘Did he owe you any rent?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘He will never pay it!’ says the y=
oung
man, resuming his examination. ‘It is beyond a doubt that he is indee=
d as
dead as Pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should t=
hink
it a happy release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I
dare say, good-looking.’ He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting=
on
the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his hand upon=
the
region of the heart. ‘I recollect once thinking there was something in
his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so?=
217;
he continues, looking round.
Krook replies, ‘You might as well ask me=
to
describe the ladies whose heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than
that he was my lodger for a year and a half and lived--or didn't live--by
law-writing, I know no more of him.’
During this dialogue Mr Tulkinghorn has stood
aloof by the old portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to
all appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed--fr=
om
the young surgeon's professional interest in death, noticeable as being qui=
te
apart from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man's
unction; and the little crazy woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been =
as
inexpressive as his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been think=
ing
all this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention=
nor
abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might the tone o=
f a
delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of Mr
Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes, addressing the young surgeo=
n in
his unmoved, professional way.
‘I looked in here,’ he observes, &=
#8216;just
before you, with the intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw
alive, some employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
stationer--Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything about =
him,
it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!’ to the little crazy wom=
an,
who has often seen him in court, and whom he has often seen, and who propos=
es,
in frightened dumb-show, to go for the law-stationer. ‘Suppose you do=
!’
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his
hopeless investigation and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpan=
e. Mr
Krook and he interchange a word or two. Mr Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
Mr Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and
his black sleeves. ‘Dear me, dear me,’ he says; ‘and it h=
as
come to this, has it! Bless my soul!’
‘Can you give the person of the house any
information about this unfortunate creature, Snagsby?’ inquires Mr
Tulkinghorn. ‘He was in arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must =
be buried,
you know.’
‘Well, sir,’ says Mr Snagsby, coug=
hing
his apologetic cough behind his hand, ‘I really don't know what advic=
e I
could offer, except sending for the beadle.’
‘I don't speak of advice,’ returns=
Mr
Tulkinghorn. ‘I could advise--’
‘No one better, sir, I am sure,’ s=
ays Mr
Snagsby, with his deferential cough.
‘I speak of affording some clue to his
connexions, or to where he came from, or to anything concerning him.’=
‘I assure you, sir,’ says Mr Snags=
by
after prefacing his reply with his cough of general propitiation, ‘th=
at I
no more know where he came from than I know--’
‘Where he has gone to, perhaps,’
suggests the surgeon to help him out.
A pause. Mr Tulkinghorn looking at the
law-stationer. Mr Krook, with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak
next.
‘As to his connexions, sir,’ says =
Mr
Snagsby, ‘if a person was to say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thous=
and
pound down, ready for you in the Bank of England if you'll only name one of
'em,' I couldn't do it, sir! About a year and a half ago--to the best of my
belief, at the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bott=
le
shop--’
‘That was the time!’ says Krook wi=
th a
nod.
‘About a year and a half ago,’ say=
s Mr
Snagsby, strengthened, ‘he came into our place one morning after brea=
kfast,
and finding my little woman (which I name Mrs Snagsby when I use that
appellation) in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave h=
er
to understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to put=
too
fine a point upon it,’ a favourite apology for plain speaking with Mr
Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative frankness, =
216;hard
up! My little woman is not in general partial to strangers, particular--not=
to
put too fine a point upon it--when they want anything. But she was rather t=
ook
by something about this person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his ha=
ir
being in want of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to
judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My li=
ttle
woman hasn't a good ear for names,’ proceeds Mr Snagsby after consult=
ing
his cough of consideration behind his hand, ‘and she considered Nemo
equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, she got into a habit of
saying to me at meals, 'Mr Snagsby, you haven't found Nimrod any work yet!'=
or
'Mr Snagsby, why didn't you give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in
Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or such like. And that is the way he gradually fell in=
to
job-work at our place; and that is the most I know of him except that he wa=
s a
quick hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him =
out,
say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have it brought=
in
on the Thursday morning. All of which--’ Mr Snagsby concludes by poli=
tely
motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much as to add, ‘I have no
doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he were in a condition to do it=
.’
‘Hadn't you better see,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn to Krook, ‘whether he had any papers that may enlighten y=
ou?
There will be an inquest, and you will be asked the question. You can read?=
’
‘No, I can't,’ returns the old man
with a sudden grin.
‘Snagsby,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, =
8216;look
over the room for him. He will get into some trouble or difficulty otherwis=
e.
Being here, I'll wait if you make haste, and then I can testify on his beha=
lf,
if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will ho=
ld
the candle for Mr Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is anyth=
ing
to help you.’
‘In the first place, here's an old
portmanteau, sir,’ says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr Tulkinghorn do=
es
not appear to have seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and
though there is very little else, heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and=
the
law-stationer conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of =
the
chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt =
old
scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at
the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long- sleeved black coat, and his
wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the peerage knows so well,
stands in exactly the same place and attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing =
in
the old portmanteau; there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those
turnpike tickets on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smellin=
g of
opium, on which are scrawled rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many
grains; took, such another day, so many more-- begun some time ago, as if w=
ith
the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left off. There are a =
few
dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to coroners' inquests; there is
nothing else. They search the cupboard and the drawer of the ink-splashed
table. There is not a morsel of an old letter or of any other writing in
either. The young surgeon examines the dress on the law- writer. A knife and
some odd halfpence are all he finds. Mr Snagsby's suggestion is the practic=
al
suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle,
and the rest come out of the room. ‘Don't leave the cat there!’
says the surgeon; ‘that won't do!’ Mr Krook therefore drives her
out before him, and she goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail a=
nd
licking her lips.
‘Good night!’ says Mr Tulkinghorn,=
and
goes home to Allegory and meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court.
Groups of its inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of
the army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr Krook's
window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already walked up to the
room, and walked down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only
condescending to see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does
see them, they quail and fall back. Mrs Perkins, who has not been for some
weeks on speaking terms with Mrs Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness
originating in young Perkins' having ‘fetched’ young Piper R=
16;a
crack,’ renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. =
The
potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official
knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchang=
es
confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance of an
impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in
station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and bare-headed
scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's the matter. The
general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr Krook warn't made away =
with
first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not. In the
midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the
neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution, is not without a certain
popularity for the moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the
body. The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be
borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation is heightened =
as
the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the beadle is on the ground and=
has
gone in.
By and by the beadle comes out, once more
intensifying the sensation, which has rather languished in the interval. He=
is
understood to be in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell
the coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is immediat=
ely
referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing whatever. Is made more
imbecile by being constantly informed that Mrs Green's son ‘was a
law-writer his-self and knowed him better than anybody,’ which son of=
Mrs
Green's appears, on inquiry, to be at the present time aboard a vessel bound
for China, three months out, but considered accessible by telegraph on
application to the Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops a=
nd
parlours, examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public. Policeman se=
en
to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and undergoes reaction. Taunts the
beadle in shrill youthful voices with having boiled a boy, choruses fragmen=
ts
of a popular song to that effect and importing that the boy was made into s=
oup
for the workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law =
and
seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on condition =
of
his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a condition he immediat=
ely
observes. So the sensation dies off for the time; and the unmoved policeman=
(to
whom a little opium, more or less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff
stock, inflexible great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitti=
ng,
pursues his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a street-corner to
look casually about for anything between a lost child and a murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded be= adle comes flitting about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror= 's name is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served and his witnes= ses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr Krook's to keep a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which earthly lodgings take for No one--and for Every one.<= o:p>
And all that night the coffin stands ready by =
the
old portmanteau; and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has l=
ain
through five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that=
any
one can trace than a deserted infant.
Next day the court is all alive--is like a fai=
r,
as Mrs Perkins, more than reconciled to Mrs Piper, says in amicable
conversation with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the
first-floor room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place
twice a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes (according=
to
the bill in the window) that his friends will rally round him and support
first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the
morning. Even children so require sustaining under the general excitement t=
hat
a pieman who has established himself for the occasion at the corner of the
court says his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hoveri=
ng
between the door of Mr Krook's establishment and the door of the Sol's Arms,
shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet spirits and accepts the
compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for
whom the jurymen are waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles =
from
the good dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequen=
ts
more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death in its
most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the landlord to the
Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the piano and takes a
Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of several short tables put
together and ornamented with glutinous rings in endless involutions, made by
pots and glasses. As many of the jury as can crowd together at the table sit
there. The rest get among the spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano.
Over the coroner's head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a be=
ll,
which rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
hanged presently.
Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremo=
ny is
in progress, sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in=
a
large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who modestly tak=
es a
position near the door as one of the general public, but seems familiar with
the room too. A whisper circulates that this is Little Swills. It is consid=
ered
not unlikely that he will get up an imitation of the coroner and make it the
principal feature of the Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
‘Well, gentlemen--’ the coroner
begins.
‘Silence there, will you!’ says the
beadle. Not to the coroner, though it might appear so.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ resumes the
coroner. ‘You are impanelled here to inquire into the death of a cert=
ain
man. Evidence will be given before you as to the circumstances attending th=
at
death, and you will give your verdict according to the--skittles; they must=
be
stopped, you know, beadle!--evidence, and not according to anything else. T=
he
first thing to be done is to view the body.’
‘Make way there!’ cries the beadle=
.
So they go out in a loose procession, something
after the manner of a straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr
Krook's back second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and
precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very neat
about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has provided a spec=
ial
little table near the coroner in the Harmonic Meeting Room) should see all =
that
is to be seen. For they are the public chroniclers of such inquiries by the
line; and he is not superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to
read in print what ‘Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the
district,’ said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as
familiarly and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, accor=
ding
to the latest examples.
Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and j=
ury
on their return. Mr Tulkinghorn, also. Mr Tulkinghorn is received with
distinction and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer,=
a
bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury learn how=
the
subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about him. ‘A very
eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen,’ says the coroner, =
216;who,
I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery of the death was mad=
e,
but he could only repeat the evidence you have already heard from the surge=
on,
the landlord, the lodger, and the law-stationer, and it is not necessary to
trouble him. Is anybody in attendance who knows anything more?’
Mrs Piper pushed forward by Mrs Perkins. Mrs P=
iper
sworn.
Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now=
, Mrs
Piper, what have you got to say about this?
Why, Mrs Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly=
in
parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs Piper lives =
in
the court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been well
beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one before the
half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen months and four days =
old
on accounts of not being expected to live such was the sufferings gentlemen=
of
that child in his gums) as the plaintive--so Mrs Piper insists on calling t=
he
deceased--was reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's =
air
in which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and considered as
his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go about some children bei=
ng
timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs Perkins may be brought forard for she is h=
ere
and will do credit to her husband and herself and family). Has seen the
plaintive wexed and worrited by the children (for children they will ever be
and you cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be
Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and his dark
looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from his pocket and
split Johnny's head (which the child knows not fear and has repeatually cal=
led
after him close at his eels). Never however see the plaintive take a pick-a=
xe
or any other wepping far from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and call=
ed
after as if not partial to children and never see him speak to neither child
nor grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing do=
wn
the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here would tell you =
that
he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the
beadle, no, sir, he is not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In
the absence of the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr
Tulkinghorn.
Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragg=
ed.
Now, boy! But stop a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few
preliminary paces.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't
know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know =
that
Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find=
no
fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can't spell it. No father, no mother, no
friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and kn=
ows
it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect who told him about the broom or
about the lie, but knows both. Can't exactly say what'll be done to him art=
er
he's dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be
something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell the
truth.
‘This won't do, gentlemen!’ says t=
he
coroner with a melancholy shake of the head.
‘Don't you think you can receive his
evidence, sir?’ asks an attentive juryman.
‘Out of the question,’ says the
coroner. ‘You have heard the boy. 'Can't exactly say' won't do, you k=
now.
We can't take THAT in a court of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravit=
y.
Put the boy aside.’
Boy put aside, to the great edification of the
audience, especially of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.
Now. Is there any other witness? No other witn=
ess.
Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, pr=
oved
to have been in the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year an=
d a
half, found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to l=
ead
you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that
conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a
verdict accordingly.
Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doub=
t.
Gentlemen, you are discharged. Good afternoon.
While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr
Tulkinghorn and he give private audience to the rejected witness in a corne=
r.
That graceless creature only knows that the de=
ad
man (whom he recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was
sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night =
when
he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to
look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and found that he had=
not
a friend in the world, said, ‘Neither have I. Not one!’ and gave
him the price of a supper and a night's lodging. That the man had often spo=
ken
to him since and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore
cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die, and similar strange
questions. That when the man had no money, he would say in passing, ‘=
I am
as poor as you to-day, Jo,’ but that when he had any, he had always (=
as
the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
‘He was wery good to me,’ says the
boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve. ‘Wen I see him a-layin=
' so
stritched out just now, I wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos
wery good to me, he wos!’
As he shuffles downstairs, Mr Snagsby, lying in
wait for him, puts a half-crown in his hand. ‘If you ever see me comi=
ng
past your crossing with my little woman--I mean a lady--’ says Mr Sna=
gsby
with his finger on his nose, ‘don't allude to it!’
For some little time the jurymen hang about the
Sol's Arms colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a clo=
ud
of pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to
Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and top up
with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being asked what he
thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his strength lying in a
slangular direction) as ‘a rummy start.’ The landlord of the So=
l's
Arms, finding Little Swills so popular, commends him highly to the jurymen =
and
public, observing that for a song in character he don't know his equal and =
that
that man's character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the
shadowy night and then flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting
hour arriving, the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is
faced (red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and supp=
ort
first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little Swills says, ‘=
;Gentlemen,
if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short description of a scene of real li=
fe
that came off here to-day.’ Is much applauded and encouraged; goes ou=
t of
the room as Swills; comes in as the coroner (not the least in the world like
him); describes the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte
accompaniment, to the refrain: With his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll,
tippy tol lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
The jingling piano at last is silent, and the
Harmonic friends rally round their pillows. Then there is rest around the
lonely figure, now laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by
the gaunt eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the mother at
whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised to her loving f=
ace,
and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon the neck to which it crept,
what an impossibility the vision would have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days=
the
now- extinguished fire within him ever burned for one woman who held him in=
her
heart, where is she, while these ashes are above the ground!
It is anything but a night of rest at Mr
Snagsby's, in Cook's Court, where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr Snag=
sby
himself allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into
twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender heart and a
susceptible something that possibly might have been imagination, but for
Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may, now, it was so direfully
impressed at tea-time by Mr Snagsby's account of the inquiry at which he had
assisted that at supper-time she projected herself into the kitchen, preced=
ed
by a flying Dutch cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she
only came out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain=
of
fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically availed
herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs Snagsby not to give her warn=
ing ‘when
she quite comes to,’ and also in appeals to the whole establishment to
lay her down on the stones and go to bed. Hence, Mr Snagsby, at last hearing
the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street go into that disinterested
ecstasy of his on the subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, tho=
ugh
the most patient of men, ‘I thought you was dead, I am sure!’
What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes =
he
settles when he strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus cr=
ow
(so men crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what ca=
nnot
be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that daylight comes,
morning comes,
Then the active and intelligent, who has got i=
nto
the morning papers as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr Krook's and=
bears
off the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,
pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the
bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed, while our de=
ar
brothers and sisters who hang about official back-stairs--would to heaven t=
hey
HAD departed!--are very complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of
ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would
shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian
burial.
With houses looking on, on every side, save wh=
ere
a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every
villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of d=
eath
in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down a foot or tw=
o,
here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at
many a sick-bedside, a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization a=
nd
barbarism walked this boastful island together.
Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come=
too
soon or stay too long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into=
the
windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least
with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly abo=
ve
the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy =
to
the touch! It is well that you should call to every passerby, ‘Look h=
ere!’
With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.<= o:p>
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly
sweeps the step and makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and tri=
mly,
looks in again a little while, and so departs.
Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected
witness, who ‘can't exactly say’ what will be done to him in
greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is
something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: R=
16;He
wos wery good to me, he wos!’
It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at
last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart. Mrs Rouncewell is full of hospitable
cares, for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The
fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad tidings=
to
benighted England. It has also found out that they will entertain a brillia=
nt
and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the BEAU MONDE (the fashionable
intelligence is weak in English, but a giant refreshed in French) at the
ancient and hospitable family seat in Lincolnshire.
For the greater honour of the brilliant and
distinguished circle, and of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch=
of
the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its pro=
per
limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the
house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvin=
gly
beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides
over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and
never catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows and touches the
ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness never contemplated =
by
the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney- piece=
, it
throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the
hearth and seems to rend it.
Through the same cold sunshine and the same sh=
arp
wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's wom=
an
and Sir Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a
considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging
demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs with
glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out of the
yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and canter between the
sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of t=
he
ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord,=
and
the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for
even here my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera,
theatre, drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only =
last
Sunday, when poor wretches were gay--within the walls playing with children
among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a sc=
ore
abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wo=
oden
horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our
Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty
little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing
Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visit=
ing,
billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refus=
e,
animate and inanimate--only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Bore=
dom
and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in
spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris.
Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind--her Ariel has put a
girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped--but the
imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been
experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for
endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, l=
et
it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering=
in
the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain--two dark square towers rising
out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in
Jacob's dream!
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent sta=
te,
and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate=
his
own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaust=
ible
a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the
carriage and generally reviews his importance to society.
‘You have an unusual amount of
correspondence this morning?’ says my Lady after a long time. She is
fatigued with reading. Has almost read a page in twenty miles.
‘Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever=
.’
‘I saw one of Mr Tulkinghorn's long
effusions, I think?’
‘You see everything,’ says Sir
Leicester with admiration.
‘Ha!’ sighs my Lady. ‘He is =
the
most tiresome of men!’
‘He sends--I really beg your pardon--he
sends,’ says Sir Leicester, selecting the letter and unfolding it, =
8216;a
message to you. Our stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript d=
rove
it out of my memory. I beg you'll excuse me. He says--’ Sir Leicester=
is
so long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks a
little irritated. ‘He says 'In the matter of the right of way--' I beg
your pardon, that's not the place. He says--yes! Here I have it! He says, 'I
beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope, has benefited by the
change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as it may interest her) that I
have something to tell her on her return in reference to the person who cop=
ied
the affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curi=
osity.
I have seen him.'‘
My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her win=
dow.
‘That's the message,’ observes Sir
Leicester.
‘I should like to walk a little,’ =
says
my Lady, still looking out of her window.
‘Walk?’ repeats Sir Leicester in a
tone of surprise.
‘I should like to walk a little,’ =
says
my Lady with unmistakable distinctness. ‘Please to stop the carriage.=
’
The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man
alights from the rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient =
to
an impatient motion of my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly and walks
away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous politeness, is
unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a minute or two has
elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles, looks very handsome, takes=
his
arm, lounges with him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resu=
mes
her seat in the carriage.
The rattle and clatter continue through the
greater part of three days, with more or less of bell-jingling and
whip-cracking, and more or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses.
Their courtly politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the
theme of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady, s=
ays
Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be her amiable
father, one can see at a glance that they love each other. One observes my =
Lord
with his white hair, standing, hat in hand, to help my Lady to and from the
carriage. One observes my Lady, how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, wi=
th
an inclination of her gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel
fingers! It is ravishing!
The sea has no appreciation of great men, but
knocks them about like the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leices=
ter,
whose countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in wh=
ose
aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the Radical of Na=
ture
to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it after stopping to refit, and=
he
goes on with my Lady for Chesney Wold, lying only one night in London on the
way to Lincolnshire.
Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the =
day
declines, and through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows =
of
bare trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched at=
the
western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to coming night,
they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the
elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of the occupancy of the carri=
age
as it passes underneath, some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are c=
ome
down, some arguing with malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting =
to
consider the question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent
debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in puttin=
g in
a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the travelling
chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly through some of the
windows, though not through so many as to give an inhabited expression to t=
he
darkening mass of front. But the brilliant and distinguished circle will so=
on
do that.
Mrs Rouncewell is in attendance and receives S=
ir
Leicester's customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
‘How do you do, Mrs Rouncewell? I am gla=
d to
see you.’
‘I hope I have the honour of welcoming y=
ou
in good health, Sir Leicester?’
‘In excellent health, Mrs Rouncewell.=
217;
‘My Lady is looking charmingly well,R=
17;
says Mrs Rouncewell with another curtsy.
My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure=
of
words, that she is as wearily well as she can hope to be.
But Rosa is in the distance, behind the
housekeeper; and my Lady, who has not subdued the quickness of her observat=
ion,
whatever else she may have conquered, asks, ‘Who is that girl?’=
‘A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa.=
’
‘Come here, Rosa!’ Lady Dedlock
beckons her, with even an appearance of interest. ‘Why, do you know h=
ow
pretty you are, child?’ she says, touching her shoulder with her two
forefingers.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, ‘No, if y=
ou please,
my Lady!’ and glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to l=
ook,
but looks all the prettier.
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen, my Lady.’
‘Nineteen,’ repeats my Lady
thoughtfully. ‘Take care they don't spoil you by flattery.’
‘Yes, my Lady.’
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 mak=
e 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 gracefu=
l,
so beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling touch
that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs Rouncewell confirms all this, not without
personal pride, reserving only the one point of affability. Mrs Rouncewell =
is
not quite sure as to that. Heaven forbid that she should say a syllable in
dispraise of any member of that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, wh=
om
the whole world admires; but if my Lady would only be ‘a little more
free,’ not quite so cold and distant, Mrs Rouncewell thinks she would=
be
more affable.
‘'Tis almost a pity,’ Mrs Rouncewe=
ll
adds--only ‘almost’ because it borders on impiety to suppose th=
at
anything could be better than it is, in such an express dispensation as the
Dedlock affairs--’that my Lady has no family. If she had had a daught=
er
now, a grown young lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the on=
ly
kind of excellence she wants.’
‘Might not that have made her still more
proud, grandmother?’ says Watt, who has been home and come back again=
, he
is such a good grandson.
‘More and most, my dear,’ returns =
the
housekeeper with dignity, ‘are words it's not my place to use--nor so
much as to hear--applied to any drawback on my Lady.’
‘I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she=
is
proud, is she not?’
‘If she is, she has reason to be. The De=
dlock
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!R=
17;
‘Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear,
are not fit subjects for joking.’
‘Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,&=
#8217;
says Watt, ‘and I humbly ask his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that
even with the family and their guests down here, there is no objection to my
prolonging my stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other trave=
ller
might?’
‘Surely, none in the world, child.’=
;
‘I am glad of that,’ says Watt, =
8216;because
I have an inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful
neighbourhood.’
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down a=
nd
is very shy indeed. But according to the old superstition, it should be Ros=
a's
ears that burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is hold=
ing
forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thi=
rty,
from somewhere in the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a
large-eyed brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a cert=
ain
feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws
too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably keen =
and
wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the cor=
ners
of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed wi=
th,
especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives. Through all the go=
od
taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express
themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly
tamed. Besides being accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her
post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;
consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for having
attracted my Lady's attention, and she pours them out with such grim ridicu=
le
as she sits at dinner that her companion, the affectionate man, is rather
relieved when she arrives at the spoon stage of that performance.
Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's
service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, th=
is
puppet, caressed--absolutely caressed--by my Lady on the moment of her arri=
ving
at the house! Ha, ha, ha! ‘And do you know how pretty you are, child?=
’
‘No, my Lady.’ You are right there! ‘And how old are you,
child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!’ Oh, h=
ow
droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
In short, it is such an admirable thing that
Mademoiselle Hortense can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, ev=
en
among her countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment expresse=
d,
in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of face, thin
elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which intense appreciatio=
n of
humour is frequently reflected in my Lady's mirrors when my Lady is not amo=
ng
them.
All the mirrors in the house are brought into
action now, many of them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces,
simpering faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not =
submit
to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to pass a January =
week
or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable intelligence, a mighty hu=
nter
before the Lord, hunts with a keen scent, from their breaking cover at the
Court of St. James's to their being run down to death. The place in
Lincolnshire is all alive. By day guns and voices are heard ringing in the
woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-=
on
pervade the village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openin=
gs
in the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my Lady's
picture hangs over the great chimney- piece, is like a row of jewels set in=
a
black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is almost warmed by so much =
gallant
company, and the general flavour of the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate
perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle compreh=
ends
within it no contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty,
and virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of its
immense advantages. What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth n=
ow
(more the pity) to set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched
jack-towel neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. T=
here
are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed, swooning in o=
pera
boxes with excess of delight and being revived by other dainty creatures po=
king
long-necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is no beau whom it takes fo=
ur
men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executi=
ons,
or who is troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. Bu=
t is
there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle notwithstanding,
dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got below the surface and is
doing less harmless things than jack- towelling itself and stopping its own
digestion, to which no rational person need particularly object?
Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another
fashion, not so new, but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaz=
e on
the world and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be
languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who are to
rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by
ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder and walking backward
like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves in the milliners' and tail=
ors'
patterns of past generations and be particularly careful not to be in earne=
st
or to receive any impress from the moving age.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable
reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir
Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not =
see
to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to b=
e;
the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it
formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present
government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the format=
ion
of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas
Doodle--supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with
Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach
arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and
the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, =
the
Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do wi=
th
Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved=
for
Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good eno=
ugh
for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone =
to
pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) bec=
ause
you can't provide for Noodle!
On the other hand, the Right Honourable William
Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwrec=
k of
the country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it tha=
t is
in question--is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you
ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him
from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, =
you
would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, y=
ou
would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would
have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have
strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the business
habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the
mere caprice of Puffy!
As to this point, and as to some minor topics,
there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant
and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle =
and
his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the great actors for whom=
the
stage is reserved. A People there are, no doubt--a certain large number of
supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for
shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their
followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns,
are the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear =
upon
the scene for ever and ever.
In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at
Chesney Wold than the brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for
itself in the long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circ=
les,
as with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very strange appearanc=
es
may be seen in active motion outside. With this difference, that being
realities and not phantoms, there is the greater danger of their breaking i=
n.
Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full tha=
t a
burning sense of injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, =
and
is not to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of
the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and having an
old-fashioned business air. It is Mr Tulkinghorn's room, and is never besto=
wed
on anybody else, for he may come at any time. He is not come yet. It is his
quiet habit to walk across the park from the village in fine weather, to dr=
op
into this room as if he had never been out of it since he was last seen the=
re,
to request a servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he
should be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of =
the
library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag- staff over h=
is
head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine morning when he is down
here, his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger
species of rook.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him=
in
the dusk of the library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady
glances down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive
him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night my La=
dy
casually asks her maid, ‘Is Mr Tulkinghorn come?’
Every night the answer is, ‘No, my Lady,=
not
yet.’
One night, while having her hair undressed, my
Lady loses herself in deep thought after this reply until she sees her own
brooding face in the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously
observing her.
‘Be so good as to attend,’ says my
Lady then, addressing the reflection of Hortense, ‘to your business. =
You
can contemplate your beauty at another time.’
‘Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty.&=
#8217;
‘That,’ says my Lady, ‘you
needn't contemplate at all.’
At length, one afternoon a little before sunse=
t,
when the bright groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enliv=
ened
the Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady remain
upon the terrace, Mr Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards them at his usual
methodical pace, which is never quickened, never slackened. He wears his us=
ual
expressionless mask--if it be a mask --and carries family secrets in every =
limb
of his body and every crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devote=
d to
the great or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is=
his
personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; he is=
his
own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
‘How do you do, Mr Tulkinghorn?’ s=
ays
Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
Mr Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is
quite well. My Lady is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with
his hands behind him, walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My L=
ady
walks upon the other side.
‘We expected you before,’ says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation. As much as to say, ‘Mr Tulkinghorn= , we remember your existence when you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!’<= o:p>
Mr Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his
head and says he is much obliged.
‘I should have come down sooner,’ =
he
explains, ‘but that I have been much engaged with those matters in the
several suits between yourself and Boythorn.’
‘A man of a very ill-regulated mind,R=
17;
observes Sir Leicester with severity. ‘An extremely dangerous person =
in
any community. A man of a very low character of mind.’
‘He is obstinate,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn.
‘It is natural to such a man to be so,=
8217;
says Sir Leicester, looking most profoundly obstinate himself. ‘I am =
not
at all surprised to hear it.’
‘The only question is,’ pursues the
lawyer, ‘whether you will give up anything.’
‘No, sir,’ replies Sir Leicester. =
‘Nothing.
I give up?’
‘I don't mean anything of importance. Th=
at,
of course, I know you would not abandon. I mean any minor point.’
‘Mr Tulkinghorn,’ returns Sir
Leicester, ‘there can be no minor point between myself and Mr Boythor=
n.
If I go farther, and observe that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of
mine can be a minor point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an
individual as in reference to the family position I have it in charge to
maintain.’
Mr Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. ‘=
;I
have now my instructions,’ he says. ‘Mr Boythorn will give us a
good deal of trouble--’
‘It is the character of such a mind, Mr
Tulkinghorn,’ Sir Leicester interrupts him, ‘TO give trouble. An
exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling person. A person who, fifty years ag=
o,
would probably have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceed=
ing,
and severely punished--if not,’ adds Sir Leicester after a moment's
pause, ‘if not hanged, drawn, and quartered.’
Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately
breast of a burden in passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next
satisfactory thing to having the sentence executed.
‘But night is coming on,’ says he,=
‘and
my Lady will take cold. My dear, let us go in.’
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlo=
ck
addresses Mr Tulkinghorn for the first time.
‘You sent me a message respecting the pe=
rson
whose writing I happened to inquire about. It was like you to remember the
circumstance; I had quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it agai=
n. I
can't imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely had
some.’
‘You had some?’ Mr Tulkinghorn
repeats.
‘Oh, yes!’ returns my Lady careles=
sly.
‘I think I must have had some. And did you really take the trouble to
find out the writer of that actual thing--what is it!--affidavit?’
‘Yes.’
‘How very odd!’
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the
ground floor, lighted in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. T=
he
fire glows brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, wh=
ere,
through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in =
the
wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller besides the waste of
clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the
chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The
lawyer stands before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his
face. He looks across his arm at my Lady.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I inquired
about the man, and found him. And, what is very strange, I found him--̵=
7;
‘Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I =
am
afraid!’ Lady Dedlock languidly anticipates.
‘I found him dead.’
‘Oh, dear me!’ remonstrated Sir
Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact as by the fact of the fact being
mentioned.
‘I was directed to his lodging--a misera=
ble,
poverty-stricken place --and I found him dead.’
‘You will excuse me, Mr Tulkinghorn,R=
17;
observes Sir Leicester. ‘I think the less said--’
‘Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the st=
ory
out’ (it is my Lady speaking). ‘It is quite a story for twiligh=
t.
How very shocking! Dead?’
Mr Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another
inclination of his head. ‘Whether by his own hand--’
‘Upon my honour!’ cries Sir Leices=
ter.
‘Really!’
‘Do let me hear the story!’ says my
Lady.
‘Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I mu=
st
say--’
‘No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr Tulkingh=
orn.’
Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point,
though he still feels that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper
classes is really--really--
‘I was about to say,’ resumes the
lawyer with undisturbed calmness, ‘that whether he had died by his own
hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell you. I should amend that phrase,
however, by saying that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though
whether by his own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly=
be
known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison accidentally.’=
;
‘And what kind of man,’ my Lady as=
ks, ‘was
this deplorable creature?’
‘Very difficult to say,’ returns t=
he
lawyer, shaking his head. ‘He had lived so wretchedly and was so
neglected, with his gipsy colour and his wild black hair and beard, that I
should have considered him the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a
notion that he had once been something better, both in appearance and
condition.’
‘What did they call the wretched being?&=
#8217;
‘They called him what he had called hims=
elf,
but no one knew his name.’
‘Not even any one who had attended on hi=
m?’
‘No one had attended on him. He was found
dead. In fact, I found him.’
‘Without any clue to anything more?̵=
7;
‘Without any; there was,’ says the
lawyer meditatively, ‘an old portmanteau, but--No, there were no pape=
rs.’
During the utterance of every word of this sho=
rt
dialogue, Lady Dedlock and Mr Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in
their customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another--as was
natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir Leicester =
has
looked at the fire, with the general expression of the Dedlock on the
staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately protest, saying that=
as
it is quite clear that no association in my Lady's mind can possibly be
traceable to this poor wretch (unless he was a begging-letter writer), he
trusts to hear no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's statio=
n.
‘Certainly, a collection of horrors,R=
17;
says my Lady, gathering up her mantles and furs, ‘but they interest o=
ne
for the moment! Have the kindness, Mr Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.=
’
Mr Tulkinghorn does so with deference and hold=
s it
open while she passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued
manner and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner--again, next day-- aga=
in,
for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deit=
y,
surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even w=
hile
presiding at her own shrine. Mr Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless
repository of noble confidences, so oddly but of place and yet so perfectly=
at
home. They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people
enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and
suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether
each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken
unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is
hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.
We held many consultations about what Richard =
was
to be, first without Mr Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with =
him,
but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Richard said he w=
as
ready for anything. When Mr Jarndyce doubted whether he might not already b=
e too
old to enter the Navy, Richard said he had thought of that, and perhaps he =
was.
When Mr Jarndyce asked him what he thought of the Army, Richard said he had
thought of that, too, and it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr Jarndyce advised hi=
m to
try and decide within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an
ordinary boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well he
really HAD tried very often, and he couldn't make out.
‘How much of this indecision of characte=
r,’
Mr Jarndyce said to me, ‘is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap =
of
uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth,=
I
don't pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is responsib=
le
for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or confirmed in him a
habit of putting off--and trusting to this, that, and the other chance, wit=
hout
knowing what chance--and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and
confused. The character of much older and steadier people may be even chang=
ed
by the circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a
boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and escape
them.’
I felt this to be true; though if I may ventur=
e to
mention what I thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that
Richard's education had not counteracted those influences or directed his
character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, I
understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most admirable man=
ner.
But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his
natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowle=
dge
to HIM. HE had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making =
them
to such perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I
suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he
had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I ha=
d no
doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient
for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I
did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a
little, instead of his studying them quite so much.
To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and =
do
not even now know whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made
verses to the same extent--or whether the young gentlemen of any country ev=
er
did.
‘I haven't the least idea,’ said
Richard, musing, ‘what I had better be. Except that I am quite sure I
don't want to go into the Church, it's a toss-up.’
‘You have no inclination in Mr Kenge's w=
ay?’
suggested Mr Jarndyce.
‘I don't know that, sir!’ replied
Richard. ‘I am fond of boating. Articled clerks go a good deal on the
water. It's a capital profession!’
‘Surgeon--’ suggested Mr Jarndyce.=
‘That's the thing, sir!’ cried
Richard.
I doubt if he had ever once thought of it befo=
re.
‘That's the thing, sir,’ repeated
Richard with the greatest enthusiasm. ‘We have got it at last. M.R.C.=
S.!’
He was not to be laughed out of it, though he
laughed at it heartily. He said he had chosen his profession, and the more =
he
thought of it, the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of heal=
ing
was the art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this
conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself
what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the discovery, he was
taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of the trouble of consider=
ation,
I wondered whether the Latin verses often ended in this or whether Richard's
was a solitary case.
Mr Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him
seriously and to put it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so
important a matter. Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but
invariably told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk ab=
out
something else.
‘By heaven!’ cried Mr Boythorn, who
interested himself strongly in the subject--though I need not say that, for=
he
could do nothing weakly; ‘I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spir=
it
and gallantry devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit th=
ere
is in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary task-mas=
ters
and low tricksters who delight in putting that illustrious art at a
disadvantage in the world. By all that is base and despicable,’ cried=
Mr
Boythorn, ‘the treatment of surgeons aboard ship is such that I would
submit the legs--both legs--of every member of the Admiralty Board to a
compound fracture and render it a transportable offence in any qualified
practitioner to set them if the system were not wholly changed in eight and
forty hours!’
‘Wouldn't you give them a week?’ a=
sked
Mr Jarndyce.
‘No!’ cried Mr Boythorn firmly. =
8216;Not
on any consideration! Eight and forty hours! As to corporations, parishes,
vestry-boards, and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to
exchange such speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksil=
ver
mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it were only=
to
prevent their detestable English from contaminating a language spoken in the
presence of the sun--as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the
ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge to recompense the inestimab=
le
services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their
expensive education with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I
would have the necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged i=
n Surgeons'
Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order that its younger
members might understand from actual measurement, in early life, HOW thick
skulls may become!’
He wound up this vehement declaration by looki=
ng
round upon us with a most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, ‘H=
a,
ha, ha!’ over and over again, until anybody else might have been expe=
cted
to be quite subdued by the exertion.
As Richard still continued to say that he was
fixed in his choice after repeated periods for consideration had been
recommended by Mr Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure
Ada and me in the same final manner that it was ‘all right,’ it
became advisable to take Mr Kenge into council. Mr Kenge, therefore, came d=
own
to dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his eye-glasses
over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did exactly what I rememb=
ered
to have seen him do when I was a little girl.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Kenge. ‘Yes. W=
ell!
A very good profession, Mr Jarndyce, a very good profession.’
‘The course of study and preparation
requires to be diligently pursued,’ observed my guardian with a glanc=
e at
Richard.
‘Oh, no doubt,’ said Mr Kenge. =
216;Diligently.’
‘But that being the case, more or less, =
with
all pursuits that are worth much,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘it is not=
a
special consideration which another choice would be likely to escape.’=
;
‘Truly,’ said Mr Kenge. ‘And=
Mr
Richard Carstone, who has so meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall I
say the classic shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt,
apply the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in t=
hat
tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born, not made, to=
the
more eminently practical field of action on which he enters.’
‘You may rely upon it,’ said Richa=
rd
in his off-hand manner, ‘that I shall go at it and do my best.’=
‘Very well, Mr Jarndyce!’ said Mr
Kenge, gently nodding his head. ‘Really, when we are assured by Mr
Richard that he means to go at it and to do his best,’ nodding feelin=
gly
and smoothly over those expressions, ‘I would submit to you that we h=
ave
only to inquire into the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambiti=
on.
Now, with reference to placing Mr Richard with some sufficiently eminent pr=
actitioner.
Is there any one in view at present?’
‘No one, Rick, I think?’ said my
guardian.
‘No one, sir,’ said Richard.
‘Quite so!’ observed Mr Kenge. =
216;As
to situation, now. Is there any particular feeling on that head?’
‘N--no,’ said Richard.
‘Quite so!’ observed Mr Kenge agai=
n.
‘I should like a little variety,’ =
said
Richard; ‘I mean a good range of experience.’
‘Very requisite, no doubt,’ return=
ed Mr
Kenge. ‘I think this may be easily arranged, Mr Jarndyce? We have onl=
y,
in the first place, to discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as
soon as we make our want--and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?--
known, our only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large num=
ber.
We have only, in the second place, to observe those little formalities which
are rendered necessary by our time of life and our being under the guardian=
ship
of the court. We shall soon be--shall I say, in Mr Richard's own light-hear=
ted
manner, 'going at it'--to our heart's content. It is a coincidence,’ =
said
Mr Kenge with a tinge of melancholy in his smile, ‘one of those
coincidences which may or may not require an explanation beyond our present
limited faculties, that I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might=
be
deemed eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I=
can
answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!’
As this was an opening in the prospect, it was
arranged that Mr Kenge should see his cousin. And as Mr Jarndyce had before
proposed to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that=
we
should make our visit at once and combine Richard's business with it.
Mr Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took =
up
our abode at a cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer's sh=
op.
London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours at a t=
ime,
seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of exhaustion than we
were. We made the round of the principal theatres, too, with great delight,=
and
saw all the plays that were worth seeing. I mention this because it was at =
the
theatre that I began to be made uncomfortable again by Mr Guppy.
I was sitting in front of the box one night wi=
th
Ada, and Richard was in the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair, when,
happening to look down into the pit, I saw Mr Guppy, with his hair flattened
down upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt a=
ll
through the performance that he never looked at the actors but constantly
looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared expression of the deepest
misery and the profoundest dejection.
It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night
because it was so very embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that t=
ime
forth, we never went to the play without my seeing Mr Guppy in the pit, alw=
ays
with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a general
feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in, and I began to =
hope
he would not come and yielded myself for a little while to the interest of =
the
scene, I was certain to encounter his languishing eyes when I least expecte=
d it
and, from that time, to be quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the
evening.
I really cannot express how uneasy this made m=
e.
If he would only have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would
have been bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing=
at
me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a
constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to cry at i=
t,
or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing naturally. As to escap=
ing Mr
Guppy by going to the back of the box, I could not bear to do that because I
knew Richard and Ada relied on having me next them and that they could never
have talked together so happily if anybody else had been in my place. So th=
ere
I sat, not knowing where to look--for wherever I looked, I knew Mr Guppy's =
eyes
were following me--and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this young=
man
was putting himself on my account.
Sometimes I thought of telling Mr Jarndyce. Th=
en I
feared that the young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin hi=
m.
Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the
possibility of his fighting Mr Guppy and giving him black eyes. Sometimes I
thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I felt I could not do=
it.
Sometimes I considered whether I should write to his mother, but that ended=
in
my being convinced that to open a correspondence would be to make the matter
worse. I always came to the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr
Guppy's perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any
theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we were
coming out, and even to get up behind our fly-- where I am sure I saw him, =
two
or three times, struggling among the most dreadful spikes. After we got hom=
e,
he haunted a post opposite our house. The upholsterer's where we lodged bei=
ng
at the corner of two streets, and my bedroom window being opposite the post=
, I
was afraid to go near the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him
(as I did one moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catch=
ing
cold. If Mr Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the daytime,=
I
really should have had no rest from him.
While we were making this round of gaieties, in
which Mr Guppy so extraordinarily participated, the business which had help=
ed
to bring us to town was not neglected. Mr Kenge's cousin was a Mr Bayham
Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large public
institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard into his house=
and
to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that those could be pursued
advantageously under Mr Badger's roof, and Mr Badger liked Richard, and as
Richard said he liked Mr Badger ‘well enough,’ an agreement was
made, the Lord Chancellor's consent was obtained, and it was all settled.
On the day when matters were concluded between
Richard and Mr Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr Badger's
house. We were to be ‘merely a family party,’ Mrs Badger's note
said; and we found no lady there but Mrs Badger herself. She was surrounded=
in
the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little,
playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a
little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetr=
y a
little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should th=
ink,
youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little l=
ist
of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there w=
as
any harm in it.
Mr Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-fac=
ed,
crisp-looking gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and
surprised eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs Bayham Badger. He
admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the curious
ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands. We had barely
taken our seats when he said to Mr Jarndyce quite triumphantly, ‘You
would hardly suppose that I am Mrs Bayham Badger's third!’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Jarndyce.
‘Her third!’ said Mr Badger. ̵=
6;Mrs
Bayham Badger has not the appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had=
two
former husbands?’
I said ‘Not at all!’
‘And most remarkable men!’ said Mr
Badger in a tone of confidence. ‘Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, w=
ho
was Mrs Badger's first husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The
name of Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European
reputation.’
Mrs Badger overheard him and smiled.
‘Yes, my dear!’ Mr Badger replied =
to
the smile, ‘I was observing to Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you
had had two former husbands--both very distinguished men. And they found it=
, as
people generally do, difficult to believe.’
‘I was barely twenty,’ said Mrs
Badger, ‘when I married Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in t=
he
Mediterranean with him; I am quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of =
my
wedding-day, I became the wife of Professor Dingo.’
‘Of European reputation,’ added Mr
Badger in an undertone.
‘And when Mr Badger and myself were marr=
ied,’
pursued Mrs Badger, ‘we were married on the same day of the year. I h=
ad
become attached to the day.’
‘So that Mrs Badger has been married to
three husbands--two of them highly distinguished men,’ said Mr Badger,
summing up the facts, ‘and each time upon the twenty-first of March at
eleven in the forenoon!’
We all expressed our admiration.
‘But for Mr Badger's modesty,’ sai=
d Mr
Jarndyce, ‘I would take leave to correct him and say three distinguis=
hed
men.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jarndyce! What I always t=
ell
him!’ observed Mrs Badger.
‘And, my dear,’ said Mr Badger, =
8216;what
do I always tell you? That without any affectation of disparaging such
professional distinction as I may have attained (which our friend Mr Carsto=
ne
will have many opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak--no, really,&=
#8217;
said Mr Badger to us generally, ‘so unreasonable--as to put my reputa=
tion
on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and Profess=
or
Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr Jarndyce,’ continued Mr Bayh=
am
Badger, leading the way into the next drawing-room, ‘in this portrait=
of
Captain Swosser. It was taken on his return home from the African station,
where he had suffered from the fever of the country. Mrs Badger considers it
too yellow. But it's a very fine head. A very fine head!’
We all echoed, ‘A very fine head!’=
‘I feel when I look at it,’ said Mr
Badger, ‘'That's a man I should like to have seen!' It strikingly
bespeaks the first-class man that Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the
other side, Professor Dingo. I knew him well--attended him in his last
illness--a speaking likeness! Over the piano, Mrs Bayham Badger when Mrs Sw=
osser.
Over the sofa, Mrs Bayham Badger when Mrs Dingo. Of Mrs Bayham Badger IN ES=
SE,
I possess the original and have no copy.’
Dinner was now announced, and we went downstai=
rs.
It was a very genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captai=
n and
the professor still ran in Mr Badger's head, and as Ada and I had the honou=
r of
being under his particular care, we had the full benefit of them.
‘Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in
that tumbler, pray. Bring me the professor's goblet, James!’
Ada very much admired some artificial flowers
under a glass.
‘Astonishing how they keep!’ said =
Mr
Badger. ‘They were presented to Mrs Bayham Badger when she was in the
Mediterranean.’
He invited Mr Jarndyce to take a glass of clar=
et.
‘Not that claret!’ he said. ‘=
;Excuse
me! This is an occasion, and ON an occasion I produce some very special cla=
ret
I happen to have. (James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr Jarndyce, this is a w=
ine
that was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You w=
ill
find it very curious. My dear, I shall he happy to take some of this wine w=
ith
you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress, James!) My love, your heal=
th!’
After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took =
Mrs
Badger's first and second husband with us. Mrs Badger gave us in the
drawing-room a biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swos=
ser
before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the time w=
hen
he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler, given to the offi=
cers
of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
‘The dear old Crippler!’ said Mrs
Badger, shaking her head. ‘She was a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, =
all
a taunto, as Captain Swosser used to say. You must excuse me if I occasiona=
lly
introduce a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser
loved that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he
frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would h=
ave
an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter- deck where we stood as
partners in the dance to mark the spot where he fell--raked fore and aft
(Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire from my tops. It was his naval wa=
y of
mentioning my eyes.’
Mrs Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked =
in
the glass.
‘It was a great change from Captain Swos=
ser
to Professor Dingo,’ she resumed with a plaintive smile. ‘I fel=
t it
a good deal at first. Such an entire revolution in my mode of life! But cus=
tom,
combined with science--particularly science--inured me to it. Being the
professor's sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot tha=
t I
had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that the
professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr Badger is not in=
the
least like either!’
We then passed into a narrative of the deaths =
of
Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad
complaints. In the course of it, Mrs Badger signified to us that she had ne=
ver
madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection, never to be
recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser. The professor was yet
dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and Mrs Badger was giving us
imitations of his way of saying, with great difficulty, ‘Where is Lau=
ra?
Let Laura give me my toast and water!’ when the entrance of the gentl=
emen
consigned him to the tomb.
Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed
for some days past, that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to ea=
ch
other's society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be
separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we got home,
and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent than usual, though I
was not quite prepared for her coming into my arms and beginning to speak to
me, with her face hidden.
‘My darling Esther!’ murmured Ada.=
‘I
have a great secret to tell you!’
A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
‘What is it, Ada?’
‘Oh, Esther, you would never guess!̵=
7;
‘Shall I try to guess?’ said I.
‘Oh, no! Don't! Pray don't!’ cried
Ada, very much startled by the idea of my doing so.
‘Now, I wonder who it can be about?̵=
7;
said I, pretending to consider.
‘It's about--’ said Ada in a whisp=
er. ‘It's
about--my cousin Richard!’
‘Well, my own!’ said I, kissing her
bright hair, which was all I could see. ‘And what about him?’
‘Oh, Esther, you would never guess!̵=
7;
It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in
that way, hiding her face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow bu=
t in
a little glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just y=
et.
‘He says--I know it's very foolish, we a=
re
both so young--but he says,’ with a burst of tears, ‘that he lo=
ves
me dearly, Esther.’
‘Does he indeed?’ said I. ‘I
never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet of pets, I could have told you that
weeks and weeks ago!’
To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful
surprise, and hold me round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so
pleasant!
‘Why, my darling,’ said I, ‘=
what
a goose you must take me for! Your cousin Richard has been loving you as
plainly as he could for I don't know how long!’
‘And yet you never said a word about it!=
’
cried Ada, kissing me.
‘No, my love,’ said I. ‘I wa=
ited
to be told.’
‘But now I have told you, you don't thin=
k it
wrong of me, do you?’ returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say n=
o if
I had been the hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I s=
aid
no very freely.
‘And now,’ said I, ‘I know t=
he
worst of it.’
‘Oh, that's not quite the worst of it,
Esther dear!’ cried Ada, holding me tighter and laying down her face
again upon my breast.
‘No?’ said I. ‘Not even that=
?’
‘No, not even that!’ said Ada, sha=
king
her head.
‘Why, you never mean to say--’ I w=
as
beginning in joke.
But Ada, looking up and smiling through her
tear's, cried, ‘Yes, I do! You know, you know I do!’ And then
sobbed out, ‘With all my heart I do! With all my whole heart, Esther!=
’
I told her, laughing, why I had known that, to=
o,
just as well as I had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had
all the talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of =
it);
and Ada was soon quiet and happy.
‘Do you think my cousin John knows, dear
Dame Durden?’ she asked.
‘Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet,=
’
said I, ‘I should think my cousin John knows pretty well as much as we
know.’
‘We want to speak to him before Richard
goes,’ said Ada timidly, ‘and we wanted you to advise us, and to
tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?=
217;
‘Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?=
’
said I.
‘I am not quite certain,’ returned=
Ada
with a bashful simplicity that would have won my heart if she had not won it
long before, ‘but I think he's waiting at the door.’
There he was, of course. They brought a chair =
on
either side of me, and put me between them, and really seemed to have falle=
n in
love with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so trustfu=
l,
and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a little while--I
never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself-- and then we gradually fe=
ll
to considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several
years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come =
to
happiness only if it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady
resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and
perseverance, each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said that he
would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that she would work
her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called me all sorts of endear=
ing
and sensible names, and we sat there, advising and talking, half the night.
Finally, before we parted, I gave them my promise to speak to their cousin =
John
to- morrow.
So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian
after breakfast, in the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery,=
and
told him that I had it in trust to tell him something.
‘Well, little woman,’ said he,
shutting up his book, ‘if you have accepted the trust, there can be no
harm in it.’
‘I hope not, guardian,’ said I. =
8216;I
can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterda=
y.’
‘Aye? And what is it, Esther?’
‘Guardian,’ said I, ‘you
remember the happy night when first we came down to Bleak House? When Ada w=
as
singing in the dark room?’
I wished to call to his remembrance the look he
had given me then. Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
‘Because--’ said I with a little
hesitation.
‘Yes, my dear!’ said he. ‘Do=
n't
hurry.’
‘Because,’ said I, ‘Ada and
Richard have fallen in love. And have told each other so.’
‘Already!’ cried my guardian, quite
astonished.
‘Yes!’ said I. ‘And to tell =
you
the truth, guardian, I rather expected it.’
‘The deuce you did!’ said he.
He sat considering for a minute or two, with h=
is
smile, at once so handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then
requested me to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he
encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself to Ric=
hard
with a cheerful gravity.
‘Rick,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘I=
am
glad to have won your confidence. I hope to preserve it. When I contemplated
these relations between us four which have so brightened my life and so
invested it with new interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, =
afar
off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada,
don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. I saw,=
and
do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar
off!’
‘We look afar off, sir,’ returned
Richard.
‘Well!’ said Mr Jarndyce. ‘T=
hat's
rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might tell you that you don't know your=
own
minds yet, that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another,
that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily brok=
en,
or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will
come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that a=
few
years hence you will be in your hearts to one another what you are to-day. =
All
I say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you DO
change-- if you DO come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to ea=
ch
other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will exc=
use
me, Rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be noth=
ing
monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I h=
ave
no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence i=
f I
do nothing to forfeit it.’
‘I am very sure, sir,’ returned
Richard, ‘that I speak for Ada too when I say that you have the stron=
gest
power over us both--rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthen=
ing
every day.’
‘Dear cousin John,’ said Ada, on h=
is
shoulder, ‘my father's place can never be empty again. All the love a=
nd
duty I could ever have rendered to him is transferred to you.’
‘Come!’ said Mr Jarndyce. ‘N=
ow
for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up and look hopefully at the dista=
nce!
Rick, the world is before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it=
, so
it will receive you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own effort=
s.
Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a g=
ood
thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kin=
d of
effort. If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you
could do nothing well without sincerely meaning it and setting about it. If=
you
entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in smal=
l,
ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and
starts, leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here.’
‘I will leave IT here, sir,’ repli=
ed
Richard smiling, ‘if I brought it here just now (but I hope I did not=
),
and will work my way on to my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.’
‘Right!’ said Mr Jarndyce. ‘=
If
you are not to make her happy, why should you pursue her?’
‘I wouldn't make her unhappy--no, not ev=
en
for her love,’ retorted Richard proudly.
‘Well said!’ cried Mr Jarndyce. =
8216;That's
well said! She remains here, in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your
active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go
well. Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think y=
ou
and Ada had better take a walk.’
Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily
shook hands with him, and then the cousins went out of the room, looking ba=
ck
again directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.
The door stood open, and we both followed them
with our eyes as they passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was
shining, and out at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her ha=
nd
drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up=
in
his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful=
, so
full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight as their
own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come and making th=
em
all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow and were gone.=
It
was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as th=
ey
went out, and the sun was clouded over.
‘Am I right, Esther?’ said my guar=
dian
when they were gone.
He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he w=
as
right!
‘Rick may gain, out of this, the quality=
he
wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good!’ said Mr Jarndyce,
shaking his head. ‘I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her fr=
iend
and counsellor always near.’ And he laid his hand lovingly upon my he=
ad.
I could not help showing that I was a little
moved, though I did all I could to conceal it.
‘Tut tut!’ said he. ‘But we =
must
take care, too, that our little woman's life is not all consumed in care for
others.’
‘Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am =
the
happiest creature in the world!’
‘I believe so, too,’ said he. R=
16;But
some one may find out what Esther never will--that the little woman is to be
held in remembrance above all other people!’
I have omitted to mention in its place that th=
ere
was some one else at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a
gentleman. It was a gentleman of a dark complexion--a young surgeon. He was
rather reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, A=
da
asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
Richard left us on the very next evening to be=
gin
his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and
great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, mo=
re
nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of m=
e,
even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the pres=
ent
and the future. I was to write Richard once a week, making my faithful repo=
rt
of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed,
under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to observe how
resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they
were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the key=
s of
their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
‘And if the suit SHOULD make us rich,
Esther--which it may, you know!’ said Richard to crown all.
A shade crossed Ada's face.
‘My dearest Ada,’ asked Richard, &=
#8216;why
not?’
‘It had better declare us poor at once,&=
#8217;
said Ada.
‘Oh! I don't know about that,’
returned Richard, ‘but at all events, it won't declare anything at on=
ce.
It hasn't declared anything in heaven knows how many years.’
‘Too true,’ said Ada.
‘Yes, but,’ urged Richard, answeri=
ng
what her look suggested rather than her words, ‘the longer it goes on,
dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is
not that reasonable?’
‘You know best, Richard. But I am afraid=
if
we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.’
‘But, my Ada, we are not going to trust =
to
it!’ cried Richard gaily. ‘We know it better than to trust to i=
t.
We only say that if it SHOULD make us rich, we have no constitutional objec=
tion
to being rich. The court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old
guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us
anything) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.̵=
7;
‘No,’ Said Ada, ‘but it may =
be
better to forget all about it.’
‘Well, well,’ cried Richard, ̵=
6;then
we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame
Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!’
‘Dame Durden's approving face,’ sa=
id
I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, ‘was not =
very
visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks
you can't do better.’
So, Richard said there was an end of it, and
immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the =
air
as would man the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and=
I,
prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr
Jarndyce at Mrs Jellyby's but had not been so fortunate as to find her at h=
ome.
It appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken Miss
Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerab=
le
speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of
coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All =
this
involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her
daughter's part in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs
Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having
gone to Mile End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business,
arising out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As=
I
had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be
found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away
with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster shells he
had been building a house with were still in the passage, but he was nowhere
discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had ‘gone after the sheep=
.’
When we repeated, with some surprise, ‘The sheep?’ she said, Oh,
yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town and came b=
ack
in such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my guardian o=
n the
following morning, and Ada was busy writing--of course to Richard--when Miss
Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she h=
ad
made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt into corners =
of
his face and hands and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzlin=
g it
with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore was either too large for h=
im
or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a
bishop and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, t=
he
boots of a ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratch=
es
that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of plaid draw=
ers
finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient
buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr Jelly=
by's
coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordin=
ary
specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had
been hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She =
was,
however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked very pretty. S=
he
was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her troubl=
e,
and she showed it as she came in by the way in which she glanced first at h=
im
and then at us.
‘Oh, dear me!’ said my guardian. &=
#8216;Due
east!’
Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and prese=
nted
her to Mr Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, ‘Ma's complimen=
ts,
and she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the pla=
n.
She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be
interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma's complimen=
ts.’
With which she presented it sulkily enough.
‘Thank you,’ said my guardian. =
216;I
am much obliged to Mrs Jellyby. Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!=
217;
We were busy with Peepy, taking off his cleric=
al
hat, asking him if he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his el=
bow
at first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take h=
im
on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr Jarndyce then withdrawing into=
the
temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual
abruptness.
‘We are going on just as bad as ever in
Thavies Inn,’ said she. ‘I have no peace of my life. Talk of
Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what's-his-name--man and a broth=
er!’
I tried to say something soothing.
‘Oh, it's of no use, Miss Summerson,R=
17;
exclaimed Miss Jellyby, ‘though I thank you for the kind intention all
the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn'=
t be
talked over if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the
piano!’
‘I shan't!’ said Peepy.
‘Very well, you ungrateful, naughty,
hard-hearted boy!’ returned Miss Jellyby with tears in her eyes. R=
16;I'll
never take pains to dress you any more.’
‘Yes, I will go, Caddy!’ cried Pee=
py,
who was really a good child and who was so moved by his sister's vexation t=
hat
he went at once.
‘It seems a little thing to cry about,= 8217; said poor Miss Jellyby apologetically, ‘but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing= so that that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And loo= k at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as he is!’<= o:p>
Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in h=
is
appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking
calmly out of his den at us while he ate his cake.
‘I have sent him to the other end of the
room,’ observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, ‘b=
ecause
I don't want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp=
! I
was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bank=
rupt
before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll he nobody but M=
a to
thank for it.’
We said we hoped Mr Jellyby's affairs were not=
in
so bad a state as that.
‘It's of no use hoping, though it's very
kind of you,’ returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. ‘Pa told=
me
only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weat=
her
the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send i=
nto
our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, =
and
I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't care about
anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I decla=
re
if I was Pa, I'd run away.’
‘My dear!’ said I, smiling. ‘=
;Your
papa, no doubt, considers his family.’
‘Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, M=
iss
Summerson,’ replied Miss Jellyby; ‘but what comfort is his fami=
ly
to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles
downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's e=
nd
to week's end, is like one great washing-day--only nothing's washed!’=
Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and
wiped her eyes.
‘I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,R=
17;
she said, ‘and am so angry with Ma that I can't find words to express
myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a s=
lave
all my life, and I won't submit to be proposed to by Mr Quale. A pretty thi=
ng,
indeed, to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of THAT!’
said poor Miss Jellyby.
I must confess that I could not help feeling
rather angry with Mrs Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl
and knowing how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said=
.
‘If it wasn't that we had been intimate =
when
you stopped at our house,’ pursued Miss Jellyby, ‘I should have
been ashamed to come here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to y=
ou
two. But as it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely=
to
see you again the next time you come to town.’
She said this with such great significance that
Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing something more.
‘No!’ said Miss Jellyby, shaking h=
er
head. ‘Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you w=
on't
betray me. I am engaged.’
‘Without their knowledge at home?’
said I.
‘Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,&=
#8217;
she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, ‘=
how
can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is--and I needn't make poor Pa more
miserable by telling HIM.’
‘But would it not he adding to his
unhappiness to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?’ said=
I.
‘No,’ said Miss Jellyby, softening=
. ‘I
hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see
me, and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with =
me,
and they should have some care taken of them then.’
There was a good deal of affection in poor Cad=
dy.
She softened more and more while saying this and cried so much over the
unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his =
cave
under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud
lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had
restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was laugh=
ing
(she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of
mind; even then it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns =
by
the chin and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his
spirits were not equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of
window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.
‘It began in your coming to our house,=
8217;
she said.
We naturally asked how.
‘I felt I was so awkward,’ she
replied, ‘that I made up my mind to be improved in that respect at all
events and to learn to dance. I told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must=
be
taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn=
't
in sight, but I was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went t=
o Mr
Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street.’
‘And was it there, my dear--’ I be=
gan.
‘Yes, it was there,’ said Caddy, &=
#8216;and
I am engaged to Mr Turveydrop. There are two Mr Turveydrops, father and son=
. My
Mr Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought =
up
and was likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him.’=
‘I am sorry to hear this,’ said I,=
‘I
must confess.’
‘I don't know why you should be sorry,=
8217;
she retorted a little anxiously, ‘but I am engaged to Mr Turveydrop,
whether or no, and he is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his
side, because old Mr Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might b=
reak
his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr
Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed--very gentlemanly.’
‘Does his wife know of it?’ asked =
Ada.
‘Old Mr Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?=
8217;
returned Miss Jellyby, opening her eyes. ‘There's no such person. He =
is a
widower.’
We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg h=
ad
undergone so much on account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a
bell- rope whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned =
his
sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for compass=
ion,
and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceed=
ed,
after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss and assuring him that she hadn't m=
eant
to do it.
‘That's the state of the case,’ sa= id Caddy. ‘If I ever blame myself, I still think it's Ma's fault. We are= to be married whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office and wri= te to Ma. It won't much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,’ said Caddy with a sob, ‘that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if= old Mr Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does.’<= o:p>
‘It was he who was very gentlemanly, I
think!’ said I.
‘Very gentlemanly indeed,’ said Ca=
ddy.
‘He is celebrated almost everywhere for his deportment.’
‘Does he teach?’ asked Ada.
‘No, he don't teach anything in particul=
ar,’
replied Caddy. ‘But his deportment is beautiful.’
Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitat=
ion
and reluctance that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and fel=
t we
ought to know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had
improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady, and t=
hat
she frequently went there early in the morning and met her lover for a few =
minutes
before breakfast--only for a few minutes. ‘I go there at other times,=
’
said Caddy, ‘but Prince does not come then. Young Mr Turveydrop's nam=
e is
Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he di=
dn't
christen himself. Old Mr Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembranc=
e of
the Prince Regent. Old Mr Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of=
his
deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made these li=
ttle
appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with you, because I like t=
he
poor thing for her own sake and I believe she likes me. If you could see yo=
ung Mr
Turveydrop, I am sure you would think well of him--at least, I am sure you
couldn't possibly think any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson.=
I
couldn't ask you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would,’ sa=
id
Caddy, who had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, ‘I should be =
very
glad--very glad.’
It happened that we had arranged with my guard=
ian
to go to Miss Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our
account had interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our
going there again. As I trusted that I might have sufficient influence with
Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step if I fully accepted t=
he
confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she
and I and Peepy should go to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and
Ada at Miss Flite's, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was o=
n condition
that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to dinner. The last
article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to by both, we smartened Pe=
epy
up a little with the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a h=
air-
brush, and went out, bending our steps towards Newman Street, which was very
near.
I found the academy established in a sufficien=
tly
dingy house at the corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase
windows. In the same house there were also established, as I gathered from =
the
plates on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly=
, no
room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size=
and
situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, MR TURVEYDROP. The door=
was
open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several oth=
er
musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking
rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been
lent, last night, for a concert.
We went upstairs--it had been quite a fine hou=
se
once, when it was anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody=
's
business to smoke in it all day--and into Mr Turveydrop's great room, which=
was
built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight. It was a b=
are,
resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms along the walls, and t=
he
walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres and little cut-gla=
ss
branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops=
as
other branches might shed autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging
from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were
assembled; and I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy,
pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. ‘Miss Summers=
on, Mr
Prince Turveydrop!’
I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of
youthful appearance with flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the
ends all round his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at
school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His
little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little
innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, =
but
made this singular effect upon me, that I received the impression that he w=
as
like his mother and that his mother had not been much considered or well us=
ed. ‘I
am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend,’ he said, bowing low to m=
e. ‘I
began to fear,’ with timid tenderness, ‘as it was past the usual
time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.’
‘I beg you will have the goodness to
attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir=
,’
said I.
‘Oh, dear!’ said he.
‘And pray,’ I entreated, ‘do=
not
allow me to be the cause of any more delay.’
With that apology I withdrew to a seat between
Peepy (who, being well used to it, had already climbed into a corner place)=
and
an old lady of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class =
and
who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then tinkled t=
he
strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance.
Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr Turveydrop, in the full lu=
stre
of his deportment.
He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, an= d he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even h= is ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up= if it were cast loose. He had under his arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim, and in his hand a pair of whi= te gloves with which he flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He ha= d a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristba= nds, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment.<= o:p>
‘Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's frien=
d,
Miss Summerson.’
‘Distinguished,’ said Mr Turveydro=
p, ‘by
Miss Summerson's presence.’ As he bowed to me in that tight state, I
almost believe I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes.
‘My father,’ said the son, aside, =
to
me with quite an affecting belief in him, ‘is a celebrated character.=
My
father is greatly admired.’
‘Go on, Prince! Go on!’ said Mr
Turveydrop, standing with his back to the fire and waving his gloves
condescendingly. ‘Go on, my son!’
At this command, or by this gracious permissio=
n,
the lesson went on. Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing;
sometimes played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what
little breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always conscienti=
ously
moved with the least proficient through every step and every part of the
figure; and never rested for an instant. His distinguished father did nothi=
ng
whatever but stand before the fire, a model of deportment.
‘And he never does anything else,’
said the old lady of the censorious countenance. ‘Yet would you belie=
ve
that it's HIS name on the door-plate?’
‘His son's name is the same, you know,=
8217;
said I.
‘He wouldn't let his son have any name i=
f he
could take it from him,’ returned the old lady. ‘Look at the so=
n's
dress!’ It certainly was plain--threadbare--almost shabby. ‘Yet=
the
father must be garnished and tricked out,’ said the old lady, ‘=
because
of his deportment. I'd deport him! Transport him would be better!’
I felt curious to know more concerning this pe=
rson.
I asked, ‘Does he give lessons in deportment now?’
‘Now!’ returned the old lady short=
ly. ‘Never
did.’
After a moment's consideration, I suggested th=
at
perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment.
‘I don't believe he can fence at all, ma=
'am,’
said the old lady.
I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old la=
dy,
becoming more and more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwe=
lt
upon the subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong
assurances that they were mildly stated.
He had married a meek little dancing-mistress,
with a tolerable connexion (having never in his life before done anything b=
ut
deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered=
her
to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were
indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment to the best
models and to keep the best models constantly before himself, he had found =
it
necessary to frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort,=
to
be seen at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times, and to lead an idle
life in the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate
little dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and
laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the mainsprin=
g of
the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing selfishness, his wife
(overpowered by his deportment) had, to the last, believed in him and had, =
on
her death-bed, in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one w=
ho
had an inextinguishable claim upon him and whom he could never regard with =
too
much pride and deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and havi=
ng
the deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and
now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a day and
looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle.
‘The airs the fellow gives himself!̵=
7;
said my informant, shaking her head at old Mr Turveydrop with speechless
indignation as he drew on his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the ho=
mage
she was rendering. ‘He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! A=
nd
he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might
suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!’ said the old lady,
apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. ‘I could bite you!’=
I could not help being amused, though I heard =
the
old lady out with feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her w=
ith
the father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without the=
old
lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old lady's account with=
out
them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried
conviction with it.
My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr Turv=
eydrop
working so hard, to old Mr Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when
the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.
He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred=
a
charm and a distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it
necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any
case, but merely told him where I did reside.
‘A lady so graceful and accomplished,=
217;
he said, kissing his right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pu=
pils,
‘will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to poli=
sh--
polish--polish!’
He sat down beside me, taking some pains to si=
t on
the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on =
the
sofa. And really he did look very like it.
‘To polish--polish--polish!’ he
repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his fingers. ‘=
;But
we are not, if I may say so to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and
Art--’ with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for h=
im
to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes ‘--we a=
re
not what we used to be in point of deportment.’
‘Are we not, sir?’ said I.
‘We have degenerated,’ he returned,
shaking his head, which he could do to a very limited extent in his cravat.=
‘A
levelling age is not favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perha=
ps I
speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have =
been
called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal Highness
the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he
drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), 'Who is he? Who=
the
devil is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' B=
ut
these are little matters of anecdote--the general property, ma'am-- still
repeated occasionally among the upper classes.’
‘Indeed?’ said I.
He replied with the high-shouldered bow. ̵=
6;Where
what is left among us of deportment,’ he added, ‘still lingers.
England--alas, my country!--has degenerated very much, and is degenerating
every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to
succeed us but a race of weavers.’
‘One might hope that the race of gentlem=
en
would be perpetuated here,’ said I.
‘You are very good.’ He smiled wit=
h a
high-shouldered bow again. ‘You flatter me. But, no--no! I have never
been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid tha=
t I
should disparage my dear child, but he has--no deportment.’
‘He appears to be an excellent master,=
8217;
I observed.
‘Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an
excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be
imparted, he can impart. But there
I glanced towards the centre of the room, where
Miss Jellyby's lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater
drudgery than ever.
‘My amiable child,’ murmured Mr
Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.
‘Your son is indefatigable,’ said =
I.
‘It is my reward,’ said Mr Turveyd=
rop,
‘to hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in the footsteps of =
his
sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman,̵=
7;
said Mr Turveydrop with very disagreeable gallantry, ‘what a sex you =
are!’
I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this
time putting on her bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elap=
sed,
there was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the
unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't know, b=
ut
they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a dozen words.
‘My dear,’ said Mr Turveydrop beni=
gnly
to his son, ‘do you know the hour?’
‘No, father.’ The son had no watch.
The father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out with an air that wa=
s an
example to mankind.
‘My son,’ said he, ‘it's two
o'clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three.’
‘That's time enough for me, father,̵=
7;
said Prince. ‘I can take a morsel of dinner standing and be off.̵=
7;
‘My dear boy,’ returned his father=
, ‘you
must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table.’
‘Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, fat=
her?’
‘Yes, my dear. I suppose,’ said Mr
Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders with modest
consciousness, ‘that I must show myself, as usual, about town.’=
‘You had better dine out comfortably
somewhere,’ said his son.
‘My dear child, I intend to. I shall tak=
e my
little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.’
‘That's right. Good-bye, father!’ =
said
Prince, shaking hands.
‘Good-bye, my son. Bless you!’
Mr Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manne=
r,
and it seemed to do his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased =
with
him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it wer=
e an
unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the
elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (=
and
particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my
favourable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for=
him
and a compassion for him as he put his little kit in his pocket--and with it
his desire to stay a little while with Caddy--and went away good-humouredly=
to
his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less ir=
ate
with his father than the censorious old lady.
The father opened the room door for us and bow=
ed
us out in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In =
the
same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his w=
ay
to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself am=
ong
the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsider=
ing
what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I was quite unable to talk =
to
Caddy or even to fix my attention on what she said to me, especially when I
began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other
gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation
entirely on their deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the
possibility of so many Mr Turveydrops that I said, ‘Esther, you must =
make
up your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy.’=
I
accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln's Inn=
.
Caddy told me that her lover's education had b=
een
so neglected that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he =
were
not so anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he
would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words th=
at
they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. ‘He does it with =
the
best intention,’ observed Caddy, ‘but it hasn't the effect he
means, poor fellow!’ Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be
expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole life in the
dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morni=
ng,
noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for
both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable =
than
learned. ‘Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl who had =
any
right to give herself airs,’ said Caddy. ‘I know little enough,=
I
am sure, thanks to Ma!
‘There's another thing I want to tell yo=
u,
now we are alone,’ continued Caddy, ‘which I should not have li=
ked
to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house
ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful=
for
Prince's wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle that =
it's
impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. S=
o I
get a little practice with--who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the
morning I help her to tidy her room and clean her birds, and I make her cup=
of
coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so w=
ell
that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite
delight old Mr Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I
can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea,
and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever=
at
my needle, yet,’ said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy's frock=
, ‘but
perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to Prince and have b=
een
doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to =
Ma.
It rather put me out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare lookin=
g so
neat and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the who=
le I
hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to Ma.’
The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her
heart, and touched mine. ‘Caddy, my love,’ I replied, ‘I
begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends=
.’
‘Oh, do you?’ cried Caddy. ‘=
How
happy that would make me!’
‘My dear Caddy,’ said I, ‘le=
t us
be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters=
and
try to find the right way through them.’ Caddy was overjoyed. I said
everything I could in my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, an=
d I
would not have objected to old Mr Turveydrop that day for any smaller
consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.
By this time we were come to Mr Krook's, whose
private door stood open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announc=
ing
a room to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proce=
eded
upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and that o=
ur
little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant
room being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door to which =
Miss
Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad
and desolate place it was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange
sensation of mournfulness and even dread. ‘You look pale,’ said
Caddy when we came out, ‘and cold!’ I felt as if the room had
chilled me.
We had walked slowly while we were talking, an=
d my
guardian and Ada were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret.
They were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good a=
s to
attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her cheerf=
ully
by the fire.
‘I have finished my professional visit,&=
#8217;
he said, coming forward. ‘Miss Flite is much better and may appear in
court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed
there, I understand.’
Miss Flite received the compliment with
complacency and dropped a general curtsy to us.
‘Honoured, indeed,’ said she, R=
16;by
another visit from the wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of
Bleak House beneath my humble roof!’ with a special curtsy. ‘Fi=
tz-Jarndyce,
my dear’-- she had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and alwa=
ys
called her by it--’a double welcome!’
‘Has she been very ill?’ asked Mr
Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance on her. She answe=
red
for herself directly, though he had put the question in a whisper.
‘Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell
indeed,’ she said confidentially. ‘Not pain, you know--trouble.=
Not
bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth is,’ in a subdued voice=
and
trembling, ‘we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I =
am
very susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr Woodcourt
knows how much. My physician, Mr Woodcourt!’ with great stateliness. =
‘The
wards in Jarndyce--Jarndyce of Bleak House--Fitz-Jarndyce!’
‘Miss Flite,’ said Mr Woodcourt in=
a
grave kind of voice, as if he were appealing to her while speaking to us, a=
nd
laying his hand gently on her arm, ‘Miss Flite describes her illness =
with
her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which mig=
ht
have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitat=
ion.
She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late fo=
r me
to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that
disappointment by coming here since and being of some small use to her.R=
17;
‘The kindest physician in the college,=
8217;
whispered Miss Flite to me. ‘I expect a judgment. On the day of judgm=
ent.
And shall then confer estates.’
‘She will be as well in a day or two,=
217;
said Mr Woodcourt, looking at her with an observant smile, ‘as she ev=
er
will be. In other words, quite well of course. Have you heard of her good
fortune?’
‘Most extraordinary!’ said Miss Fl=
ite,
smiling brightly. ‘You never heard of such a thing, my dear! Every
Saturday, Conversation Kenge or Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in =
my
hand a paper of shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number =
in
the paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So
well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you say? Th=
at is
the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I think,̵=
7;
said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very shrewd look and shaking h=
er
right forefinger in a most significant manner, ‘that the Lord Chancel=
lor,
aware of the length of time during which the Great Seal has been open (for =
it
has been open a long time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is
given. Now that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he=
IS
a little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other day--I
attend it regularly, with my documents--I taxed him with it, and he almost
confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and HE smiled at me from=
his
bench. But it's great good fortune, is it not? And Fitz- Jarndyce lays the =
money
out for me to great advantage. Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!&=
#8217;
I congratulated her (as she addressed herself =
to
me) upon this fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long
continuance of it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or
wonder whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,
contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.
‘And what do you call these little fello=
ws,
ma'am?’ said he in his pleasant voice. ‘Have they any names?=
217;
‘I can answer for Miss Flite that they h=
ave,’
said I, ‘for she promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?=
8217;
Ada remembered very well.
‘Did I?’ said Miss Flite. ‘W=
ho's
that at my door? What are you listening at my door for, Krook?’
The old man of the house, pushing it open befo= re him, appeared there with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.<= o:p>
‘I warn't listening, Miss Flite,’ =
he
said, ‘I was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only you're so qui=
ck!’
‘Make your cat go down. Drive her away!&=
#8217;
the old lady angrily exclaimed.
‘Bah, bah! There ain't no danger,
gentlefolks,’ said Mr Krook, looking slowly and sharply from one to
another until he had looked at all of us; ‘she'd never offer at the b=
irds
when I was here unless I told her to it.’
‘You will excuse my landlord,’ said
the old lady with a dignified air. ‘M, quite M! What do you want, Kro=
ok,
when I have company?’
‘Hi!’ said the old man. ‘You
know I am the Chancellor.’
‘Well?’ returned Miss Elite. ̵=
6;What
of that?’
‘For the Chancellor,’ said the old=
man
with a chuckle, ‘not to be acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't=
it,
Miss Flite? Mightn't I take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce=
and
Jarndyce a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I nev=
er
to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go there a
mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one day with anothe=
r.’
‘I never go there,’ said Mr Jarndy=
ce
(which he never did on any consideration). ‘I would sooner go--somewh=
ere
else.’
‘Would you though?’ returned Krook,
grinning. ‘You're bearing hard upon my noble and learned brother in y=
our
meaning, sir, though perhaps it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt chi=
ld,
sir! What, you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr Jarndyce?’ The old=
man
had come by little and little into the room until he now touched my guardian
with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. =
‘It's
one of her strange ways that she'll never tell the names of these birds if =
she
can help it, though she named 'em all.’ This was in a whisper. ‘=
;Shall
I run 'em over, Flite?’ he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at=
her
as she turned away, affecting to sweep the grate.
‘If you like,’ she answered hurrie=
dly.
The old man, looking up at the cages after ano=
ther
look at us, went through the list.
‘Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Du=
st,
Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, W=
igs,
Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's the
whole collection,’ said the old man, ‘all cooped up together, b=
y my
noble and learned brother.’
‘This is a bitter wind!’ muttered =
my
guardian.
‘When my noble and learned brother gives=
his
judgment, they're to be let go free,’ said Krook, winking at us again=
. ‘And
then,’ he added, whispering and grinning, ‘if that ever was to
happen--which it won't--the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em=
.’
‘If ever the wind was in the east,’
said my guardian, pretending to look out of the window for a weathercock, &=
#8216;I
think it's there to- day!’
We found it very difficult to get away from the
house. It was not Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little
creature in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be=
. It
was Mr Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr Jarndyce. If he had
been linked to him, he could hardly have attended him more closely. He prop=
osed
to show us his Court of Chancery and all the strange medley it contained;
during the whole of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to =
Mr
Jarndyce and sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had
passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon some sec=
ret
subject which he could not make up his mind to approach. I cannot imagine a
countenance and manner more singularly expressive of caution and indecision,
and a perpetual impulse to do something he could not resolve to venture on,
than Mr Krook's was that day. His watchfulness of my guardian was incessant=
. He
rarely removed his eyes from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed
him with the slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back.
When we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across and
across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of power, and
turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until they appeared to =
be
shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.
At last, having been (always attended by the c=
at)
all over the house and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber,
which was certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on
the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old stump=
s of
pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were pasted several la=
rge
printed alphabets in several plain hands.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked my
guardian.
‘Trying to learn myself to read and writ=
e,’
said Krook.
‘And how do you get on?’
‘Slow. Bad,’ returned the old man
impatiently. ‘It's hard at my time of life.’
‘It would be easier to be taught by some
one,’ said my guardian.
‘Aye, but they might teach me wrong!R=
17;
returned the old man with a wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. ‘=
;I
don't know what I may have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn't like=
to
lose anything by being learned wrong now.’
‘Wrong?’ said my guardian with his
good-humoured smile. ‘Who do you suppose would teach you wrong?’=
;
‘I don't know, Mr Jarndyce of Bleak Hous=
e!’
replied the old man, turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing =
his
hands. ‘I don't suppose as anybody would, but I'd rather trust my own
self than another!’
These answers and his manner were strange enou=
gh
to cause my guardian to inquire of Mr Woodcourt, as we all walked across
Lincoln's Inn together, whether Mr Krook were really, as his lodger represe=
nted
him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to think
so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was al=
ways
more or less under the influence of raw gin, of which he drank great quanti=
ties
and of which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt strongl=
y;
but he did not think him mad as yet.
On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's
affections by buying him a windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer
nobody else to take off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner =
but
at my side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back. We made
much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened exceedingly; and my guar=
dian
was as merry as we were; and we were all very happy indeed until Caddy went
home at night in a hackney- coach, with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tigh=
t to
the windmill.
I have forgotten to mention--at least I have n=
ot
mentioned--that Mr Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had me=
t at
Mr Badger's. Or that Mr Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or that he
came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada, ‘Now, my
darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!’ Ada laughed and sa=
id--
But I don't think it matters what my darling s=
aid.
She was always merry.
While we were in London Mr Jarndyce was consta=
ntly
beset by the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had =
so
much astonished us. Mr Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival,=
was
in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of
temples of his into everything that went on and to brush his hair farther a=
nd
farther back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head=
in
inappeasable philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always
particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His
great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would s=
it
for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in t=
he
light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed u=
p in
admiration of Mrs Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing object of=
his
devotion. I soon discovered my mistake and found him to be train-bearer and
organ-blower to a whole procession of people.
Mrs Pardiggle came one day for a subscription =
to
something, and with her, Mr Quale. Whatever Mrs Pardiggle said, Mr Quale
repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs Jellyby out, he drew Mrs Pardi=
ggle
out. Mrs Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in behalf =
of
her eloquent friend Mr Gusher. With Mr Gusher appeared Mr Quale again. Mr
Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface and eyes so much too
small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made =
for
somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely se=
ated
before Mr Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great
creature--which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr Quale meant =
in
intellectual beauty-- and whether we were not struck by his massive
configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many missions of vario=
us
sorts among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so cle=
ar
to us as that it was Mr Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody
else's mission and that it was the most popular mission of all.
Mr Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the
tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his po=
wer;
but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where
benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular
uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in
profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of mean=
ness
to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were
anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal=
of
bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were dow=
n,
he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr Quale by Mr Gus=
her
(who had already got one, originated by Mr Quale), and when Mr Gusher spoke=
for
an hour and a half on the subject to a meeting, including two charity schoo=
ls
of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, a=
nd
requested to come forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I th=
ink
the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.
I mention this because I am coming to Mr Skimp=
ole
again. It seemed to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and
carelessness were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such thin=
gs,
and were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly undesigni=
ng
and candid man among many opposites could not fail to give him pleasure. I
should be sorry to imply that Mr Skimpole divined this and was politic; I
really never understood him well enough to know. What he was to my guardian=
, he
certainly was to the rest of the world.
He had not been very well; and thus, though he
lived in London, we had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morn=
ing
in his usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
Well, he said, here he was! He had been biliou=
s,
but rich men were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himse=
lf
that he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view--in his
expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the mo=
st
lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He
had said to the doctor, ‘Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion =
on
your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you =
with
money--in my expansive intentions--if you only knew it!’ And really (=
he
said) he meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing =
it.
If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so
much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he would have put them in the
doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very
well! If he really meant it--if his will were genuine and real, which it
was--it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and cancelled the
obligation.
‘It may be, partly, because I know nothi=
ng
of the value of money,’ said Mr Skimpole, ‘but I often feel thi=
s.
It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It=
's a
part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always
calls it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I
reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. You
haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid.=
I
mean it.'‘
‘But, suppose,’ said my guardian,
laughing, ‘he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it=
?’
‘My dear Jarndyce,’ he returned, &=
#8216;you
surprise me. You take the butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with
occupied that very ground. Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at
eighteen pence a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pou=
nd,
my honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like spring
lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I wish I had meant
the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,' said I, 'pray let us rea=
son
like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You HAD got=
the
lamb, and I have NOT got the money. You couldn't really mean the lamb witho=
ut
sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying =
it!'
He had not a word. There was an end of the subject.’
‘Did he take no legal proceedings?’
inquired my guardian.
‘Yes, he took legal proceedings,’ =
said
Mr Skimpole. ‘But in that he was influenced by passion, not by reason.
Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have
promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.’
‘He is a great favourite with my girls,&=
#8217;
said Mr Jarndyce, ‘and I have promised for them.’
‘Nature forgot to shade him off, I think=
,’
observed Mr Skimpole to Ada and me. ‘A little too boisterous--like the
sea. A little too vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider
every colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!&=
#8217;
I should have been surprised if those two could
have thought very highly of one another, Mr Boythorn attaching so much
importance to many things and Mr Skimpole caring so little for anything.
Besides which, I had noticed Mr Boythorn more than once on the point of
breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr Skimpole was referred to. Of
course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with =
him.
‘He has invited me,’ said Mr Skimp=
ole;
‘and if a child may trust himself in such hands--which the present ch=
ild
is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him-=
-I
shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will co=
st
money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By the by,
Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?’
He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, =
in
his graceful, light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.
‘Oh, yes!’ said I.
‘Coavinses has been arrested by the Great
Bailiff,’ said Mr Skimpole. ‘He will never do violence to the
sunshine any more.’
It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had alre=
ady
recalled with anything but a serious association the image of the man sitti=
ng
on the sofa that night wiping his head.
‘His successor informed me of it yesterd=
ay,’
said Mr Skimpole. ‘His successor is in my house now--in possession, I
think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I
put it to him, 'This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-ey=
ed
daughter you wouldn't like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?' But he
stayed.’
Mr Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity =
and
lightly touched the piano by which he was seated.
‘And he told me,’ he said, playing
little chords where I shall put full stops, ‘The Coavinses had left.
Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular.=
The
rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage.’
Mr Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and bega=
n to
walk about. Mr Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. =
Ada
and I both looked at Mr Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in=
his
mind. After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his
head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopp=
ed Mr
Skimpole's playing. ‘I don't like this, Skimpole,’ he said
thoughtfully.
Mr Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subje=
ct,
looked up surprised.
‘The man was necessary,’ pursued my
guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the
piano and the end of the room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his =
head
as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. ‘If we make such =
men
necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, o=
r by
our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm=
in
his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to know more about th=
is.’
‘Oh! Coavinses?’ cried Mr Skimpole=
, at
length perceiving what he meant. ‘Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses'
headquarters, and you can know what you will.’
Mr Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting
for the signal. ‘Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that =
way
as soon as another!’ We were quickly ready and went out. Mr Skimpole =
went
with us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, =
he
said, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him!
He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancer=
y Lane,
where there was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Cas=
tle.
On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out=
of
a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.
‘Who did you want?’ said the boy, =
fitting
two of the spikes into his chin.
‘There was a follower, or an officer, or
something, here,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘who is dead.’
‘Yes?’ said the boy. ‘Well?&=
#8217;
‘I want to know his name, if you please?=
’
‘Name of Neckett,’ said the boy.
‘And his address?’
‘Bell Yard,’ said the boy. ‘=
Chandler's
shop, left hand side, name of Blinder.’
‘Was he--I don't know how to shape the
question--’ murmured my guardian, ‘industrious?’
‘Was Neckett?’ said the boy. ̵=
6;Yes,
wery much so. He was never tired of watching. He'd set upon a post at a str=
eet
corner eight or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it.’
‘He might have done worse,’ I hear=
d my
guardian soliloquize. ‘He might have undertaken to do it and not done=
it.
Thank you. That's all I want.’
We left the boy, with his head on one side and=
his
arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln=
's
Inn, where Mr Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, await=
ed
us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very short distance.=
We
soon found the chandler's shop. In it was a good-natured-looking old woman =
with
a dropsy, or an asthma, or perhaps both.
‘Neckett's children?’ said she in
reply to my inquiry. ‘Yes, Surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. D=
oor
right opposite the stairs.’ And she handed me the key across the coun=
ter.
I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but s=
he
took it for granted that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be
intended for the children's door, I came out without asking any more questi=
ons
and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but fou=
r of
us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the second story=
we
found we had disturbed a man who was standing there looking out of his room=
.
‘Is it Gridley that's wanted?’ he
said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry stare.
‘No, sir,’ said I; ‘I am goi=
ng
higher up.’
He looked at Ada, and at Mr Jarndyce, and at Mr
Skimpole, fixing the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed =
and
followed me. Mr Jarndyce gave him good day. ‘Good day!’ he said
abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head on wh=
ich
but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a
combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which, associated with his
figure--still large and powerful, though evidently in its decline--rather
alarmed me. He had a pen in his hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his ro=
om
in passing, I saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.
Leaving him standing there, we went up to the =
top
room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, ‘We
are locked in. Mrs Blinder's got the key!’
I applied the key on hearing this and opened t=
he
door. In a poor room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furn=
iture
was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy
child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; b=
oth
children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. Their
clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinc=
hed
and their small figures shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing and
hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.
‘Who has locked you up here alone?’=
; we
naturally asked.
‘Charley,’ said the boy, standing
still to gaze at us.
‘Is Charley your brother?’
‘No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father
called her Charley.’
‘Are there any more of you besides Charl=
ey?’
‘Me,’ said the boy, ‘and Emm=
a,’
patting the limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. ‘And Charley.=
217;
‘Where is Charley now?’
‘Out a-washing,’ said the boy,
beginning to walk up and down again and taking the nankeen bonnet much too =
near
the bedstead by trying to gaze at us at the same time.
We were looking at one another and at these two
children when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figu=
re
but shrewd and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a woman=
ly
sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a womanly
sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the
soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she
might have been a child playing at washing and imitating a poor working-wom=
an
with a quick observation of the truth.
She had come running from some place in the
neighbourhood and had made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she
was very light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she
stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.
‘Oh, here's Charley!’ said the boy=
.
The child he was nursing stretched forth its a=
rms
and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly
sort of manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at =
us
over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.
‘Is it possible,’ whispered my
guardian as we put a chair for the little creature and got her to sit down =
with
her load, the boy keeping close to her, holding to her apron, ‘that t=
his
child works for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake, look at this!’=
;
It was a thing to look at. The three children
close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third =
so
young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the
childish figure.
‘Charley, Charley!’ said my guardi=
an. ‘How
old are you?’
‘Over thirteen, sir,’ replied the
child.
‘Oh! What a great age,’ said my
guardian. ‘What a great age, Charley!’
I cannot describe the tenderness with which he
spoke to her, half playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfull=
y.
‘And do you live alone here with these
babies, Charley?’ said my guardian.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned the child,
looking up into his face with perfect confidence, ‘since father died.=
’
‘And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charl=
ey,’
said my guardian, turning his face away for a moment, ‘how do you liv=
e?’
‘Since father died, sir, I've gone out to
work. I'm out washing to-day.’
‘God help you, Charley!’ said my
guardian. ‘You're not tall enough to reach the tub!’
‘In pattens I am, sir,’ she said
quickly. ‘I've got a high pair as belonged to mother.’
‘And when did mother die? Poor mother!=
8217;
‘Mother died just after Emma was born,=
8217;
said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. ‘Then father sai=
d I
was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I work=
ed
at home and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I b=
egan
to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?’
‘And do you often go out?’
‘As often as I can,’ said Charley,
opening her eyes and smiling, ‘because of earning sixpences and
shillings!’
‘And do you always lock the babies up wh=
en
you go out?’
‘To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?=
8217;
said Charley. ‘Mrs Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr Gridley come=
s up
sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, =
and
Tom an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?’
‘No-o!’ said Tom stoutly.
‘When it comes on dark, the lamps are
lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright--almost quite
bright. Don't they, Tom?’
‘Yes, Charley,’ said Tom, ‘a=
lmost
quite bright.’
‘Then he's as good as gold,’ said =
the
little creature--Oh, in such a motherly, womanly way! ‘And when Emma's
tired, he puts her to bed. And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. And =
when
I come home and light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again =
and
has it with me. Don't you, Tom?’
‘Oh, yes, Charley!’ said Tom. R=
16;That
I do!’ And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure of his life o=
r in
gratitude and love for Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face
among the scanty folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.
It was the first time since our entry that a t=
ear
had been shed among these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of th=
eir
father and their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity=
of
taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, and by
her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she sat quite
tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb a hair=
of
the head of either of her little charges, I saw two silent tears fall down =
her
face.
I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to =
look
at the housetops, and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants,=
and
the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that Mrs
Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this
time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.
‘It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, =
sir,’
she said; ‘who could take it from them!’
‘Well, well!’ said my guardian to =
us
two. ‘It is enough that the time will come when this good woman will =
find
that it WAS much, and that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of
these--This child,’ he added after a few moments, ‘could she
possibly continue this?’
‘Really, sir, I think she might,’ =
said
Mrs Blinder, getting her heavy breath by painful degrees. ‘She's as h=
andy
as it's possible to be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children
after the mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see =
her
with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'Mrs Blinder,' he said to me=
the
very last he spoke--he was lying there --'Mrs Blinder, whatever my calling =
may
have been, I see a angel sitting in this room last night along with my chil=
d,
and I trust her to Our Father!'‘
‘He had no other calling?’ said my
guardian.
‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs Blinder, &=
#8216;he
was nothing but a follerers. When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know
what he was, and I confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn=
't
liked in the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a gen=
teel
calling,’ said Mrs Blinder, ‘and most people do object to it. Mr
Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger, though his tem=
per
has been hard tried.’
‘So you gave him notice?’ said my
guardian.
‘So I gave him notice,’ said Mrs
Blinder. ‘But really when the time came, and I knew no other ill of h=
im,
I was in doubts. He was punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, si=
r,’
said Mrs Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr Skimpole with her eye, ‘and
it's something in this world even to do that.’
‘So you kept him after all?’
‘Why, I said that if he could arrange wi=
th Mr
Gridley, I could arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much m=
ind
its being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr Gridley gave his consent gruff-=
-but
gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children
since. A person is never known till a person is proved.’
‘Have many people been kind to the child=
ren?’
asked Mr Jarndyce.
‘Upon the whole, not so bad, sir,’
said Mrs Blinder; ‘but certainly not so many as would have been if th=
eir
father's calling had been different. Mr Coavins gave a guinea, and the
follerers made up a little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had alwa=
ys
joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little
subscription, and--in general--not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some
people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some people tha=
t do
employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them,
with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and perhaps pay her less and put
upon her more. But she's patienter than others would be, and is clever too,=
and
always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. So I should s=
ay,
in general, not so bad, sir, but might be better.’
Mrs Blinder sat down to give herself a more
favourable opportunity of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much
talking before it was fully restored. Mr Jarndyce was turning to speak to us
when his attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of th=
e Mr
Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way up.
‘I don't know what you may be doing here,
ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, as if he resented our presence, ̵=
6;but
you'll excuse my coming in. I don't come in to stare about me. Well, Charle=
y!
Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?’
He bent over the group in a caressing way and =
clearly
was regarded as a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern
character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My guardian noti=
ced
it and respected it.
‘No one, surely, would come here to stare
about him,’ he said mildly.
‘May be so, sir, may be so,’ retur=
ned
the other, taking Tom upon his knee and waving him off impatiently. ‘I
don't want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing=
to
last one man his life.’
‘You have sufficient reason, I dare say,=
’
said Mr Jarndyce, ‘for being chafed and irritated--’
‘There again!’ exclaimed the man,
becoming violently angry. ‘I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascib=
le.
I am not polite!’
‘Not very, I think.’
‘Sir,’ said Gridley, putting down =
the
child and going up to him as if he meant to strike him, ‘do you know
anything of Courts of Equity?’
‘Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.’
‘To your sorrow?’ said the man,
pausing in his wrath, ‘if so, I beg your pardon. I am not polite, I k=
now.
I beg your pardon! Sir,’ with renewed violence, ‘I have been
dragged for five and twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the ha=
bit
of treading upon velvet. Go into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what =
is
one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and th=
ey
will tell you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I,=
8217;
he said, beating one hand on the other passionately, ‘am the man from
Shropshire.’
‘I believe I and my family have also had=
the
honour of furnishing some entertainment in the same grave place,’ sai=
d my
guardian composedly. ‘You may have heard my name--Jarndyce.’
‘Mr Jarndyce,’ said Gridley with a
rough sort of salutation, ‘you bear your wrongs more quietly than I c=
an
bear mine. More than that, I tell you--and I tell this gentleman, and these
young ladies, if they are friends of yours--that if I took my wrongs in any
other way, I should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by
revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get,
that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!’ he said,
speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. ‘You may t=
ell
me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to do it, und=
er
wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing it, and sinking into=
the
smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the court. If I was =
once
to sit down under it, I should become imbecile.’
The passion and heat in which he was, and the
manner in which his face worked, and the violent gestures with which he
accompanied what he said, were most painful to see.
‘Mr Jarndyce,’ he said, ‘con=
sider
my case. As true as there is a heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of
two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock =
and
so forth to my mother for her life. After my mother's death, all was to com=
e to
me except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my brothe=
r.
My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his legacy. I and s=
ome
of my relations said that he had had a part of it already in board and lodg=
ing
and some other things. Now mind! That was the question, and nothing else. No
one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part of that th=
ree
hundred pounds had been already paid or not. To settle that question, my
brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I w=
as
forced there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else.
Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first came on=
after
two years. It was then stopped for another two years while the master (may =
his
head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son, about which there wa=
s no
dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then found out that there were =
not
defendants enough--remember, there were only seventeen as yet!--but that we
must have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The
costs at that time--before the thing was begun!--were three times the legac=
y.
My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs=
. My
whole estate, left to me in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. The
suit, still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with
everything else--and here I stand, this day! Now, Mr Jarndyce, in your suit
there are thousands and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundred=
s.
Is mine less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was=
in
it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?’
Mr Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with
all his heart and that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly trea=
ted
by this monstrous system.
‘There again!’ said Mr Gridley wit=
h no
diminution of his rage. ‘The system! I am told on all hands, it's the
system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into c=
ourt
and say, 'My Lord, I beg to know this from you--is this right or wrong? Have
you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am dismissed?=
' My
Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system. I mustn't=
go
to Mr Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him wh=
en
he makes me furious by being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for I k=
now
they gain by it while I lose, don't I?--I mustn't say to him, 'I will have =
something
out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' HE is not responsible.
It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here--I may! I do=
n't
know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse t=
he
individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great
eternal bar!’
His passion was fearful. I could not have beli=
eved
in such rage without seeing it.
‘I have done!’ he said, sitting do=
wn
and wiping his face. ‘Mr Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know.=
I
ought to know it. I have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been =
in
prison for threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that
trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I sometimes =
go
beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing, too, to see me
committed into custody and brought up in custody and all that. It would be
better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell them that if I =
did
restrain myself I should become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man
once, I believe. People in my part of the country say they remember me so, =
but
now I must have this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my
wits together. It would be far better for you, Mr Gridley,' the Lord Chance=
llor
told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully
employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,' said I =
to
him, 'and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name=
of
your high office, but unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the past
drives me here!' Besides,’ he added, breaking fiercely out, ‘I'=
ll
shame them. To the last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I =
knew
when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to spe=
ak
with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here and sent me from
here many and many a time. Now send me out feet foremost!'‘
His countenance had, perhaps for years, become=
so
set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he =
was
quiet.
‘I came to take these babies down to my =
room
for an hour,’ he said, going to them again, ‘and let them play
about. I didn't mean to say all this, but it don't much signify. You're not
afraid of me, Tom, are you?’
‘No!’ said Tom. ‘You ain't a=
ngry
with ME.’
‘You are right, my child. You're going b=
ack,
Charley? Aye? Come then, little one!’ He took the youngest child on h=
is
arm, where she was willing enough to be carried. ‘I shouldn't wonder =
if
we found a ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let's go and look for him!̵=
7;
He made his former rough salutation, which was=
not
deficient in a certain respect, to Mr Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, =
went
downstairs to his room.
Upon that, Mr Skimpole began to talk, for the
first time since our arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was
really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purpose=
s.
Here was this Mr Gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising
energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious blacksmith--and he
could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in =
life
for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon--a sort of Young
Love among the thorns--when the Court of Chancery came in his way and
accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted. There they were, matched, =
ever
afterwards! Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all so=
rts
of towns, or he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of
parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery had fal=
len
upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and
Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. Then look at Coavins=
es!
How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children) illustr=
ated
the same principle! He, Mr Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the
existence of Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could had
dispensed with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he had been a sulta=
n,
and his grand vizier had said one morning, ‘What does the Commander of
the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?’ he might have even g=
one
so far as to reply, ‘The head of Coavinses!’ But what turned ou=
t to
be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most
deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses, that he had actu=
ally
been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeab=
le
way, developing these social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now
swelled and the tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the r=
oom
and thought, ‘I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little
comforts were MY work!’
There was something so captivating in his light
way of touching these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by
the side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile
even as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs Blinder. We
kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped outside the ho=
use
to see her run away to her work. I don't know where she was going, but we s=
aw
her run, such a little, little creature in her womanly bonnet and apron,
through a covered way at the bottom of the court and melt into the city's s=
trife
and sound like a dewdrop in an ocean.
My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The
astonished fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day =
she
is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to- morrow she =
may
be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with confidence
predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble to keep pace with =
her.
It would have more but that his other faithful ally, for better and for wor=
se--the
gout--darts into the old oak bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by b=
oth
legs.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troubleso=
me
demon, but still a demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the
direct male line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memo=
ry
of man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, sir.
Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have taken base
contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but the Dedlock family
have communicated something exclusive even to the levelling process of dyin=
g by
dying of their own family gout. It has come down through the illustrious li=
ne
like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among
their dignities. Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression,
though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the
discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the aristocr=
acy,
‘My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to you another
Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout.’
Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs =
to
the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenur=
e.
He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twit=
ched
and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, but he thinks,=
‘We
have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has for some hundreds of yea=
rs
been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting =
on
more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise.’
And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of
crimson and gold in the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite
picture of my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long
perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft
reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green
ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a chase when kings =
rode
to battle with sword and shield and rode a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear
witness to his greatness. Inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the
walls, say, ‘Each of us was a passing reality here and left this colo=
ured
shadow of himself and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voic=
es
of the rooks now lulling you to rest,’ and hear their testimony to his
greatness too. And he is very great this day. And woe to Boythorn or other
daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!
My Lady is at present represented, near Sir
Leicester, by her portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention=
of
remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the
fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for her recepti=
on.
It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder gapes disconsolate at =
the
hall-window; and he mentioned last night to another Mercury of his
acquaintance, also accustomed to good society, that if that sort of thing w=
as
to last--which it couldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a
man of his figure couldn't be expected to bear it--there would be no resour=
ce
for him, upon his honour, but to cut his throat!
What connexion can there be between the place =
in
Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout =
of
Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him wh=
en
he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between ma=
ny
people in the innumerable histories of this world who from opposite sides of
great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscio=
us
of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition when ask=
ed a
question by replying that he ‘don't know nothink.’ He knows that
it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder sti=
ll
to live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out.
Jo lives--that is to say, Jo has not yet died-=
-in
a ruinous place known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It=
is
a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the crazy
houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold
vagrants who after establishing their own possession took to letting them o=
ut
in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of
misery. As on the ruined human wretch vermin parasites appear, so these rui=
ned
shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps=
in
walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the r=
ain
drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more e=
vil
in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duk=
e of
Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set rig=
ht
in five hundred years--though born expressly to do it.
Twice lately there has been a crash and a clou=
d of
dust, like the springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a hou=
se
has fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and have
filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, and there are=
not
unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several more houses are nearly rea=
dy
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 cou=
rse.
It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell
him so. Whether ‘Tom’ is the popular representative of the orig=
inal
plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here =
when
the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers came to
join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a
retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the pale of hope, perhaps
nobody knows. Certainly Jo don't know.
‘For I don't,’ says Jo, ‘I d=
on't
know nothink.’
It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To
shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkn=
ess
as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops,=
and
at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see peo=
ple
read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and =
not
to have the least idea of all that language--to be, to every scrap of it, s=
tone
blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to t=
he
churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for per=
haps
Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything=
to
anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hustled, and jostl=
ed,
and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true =
that
I have no business here, or there, or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by =
the
consideration that I AM here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me unti=
l I
became the creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be
told that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a w=
itness),
but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and
cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I belong to them and not to t=
he
superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a crimi=
nal
trial, or a judge, or a bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel =
to
him (if he only knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole
material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strange=
st
thing of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the t=
ardy
morning which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty b=
it
of bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the hou=
ses
not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the Socie=
ty for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives it a brush when he=
has
finished as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of =
the
edifice and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the
spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to lo=
ok
up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.
He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it o=
ut
for the day. The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily s=
pin
and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspe=
nded
for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower animals get on in the
unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day. The blinded oxen,
over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten
out, and plunge red- eyed and foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt=
the
innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; ver=
y,
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 mind for
some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or fo=
ur,
can't remember where he left them, looks up and down the street as half
expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all
about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-
houses; a terrific dog to sheep, ready at a whistle to scamper over their b=
acks
and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed =
dog
who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo
listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfact=
ion;
likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or regret, melancholy or
joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par.
But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute!
Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and=
in
a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their
bark--but not their bite.
The day changes as it wears itself away and
becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and
wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay =
for
the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on; gas begins to
start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder, runs along the mar=
gin
of the pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to close in.
In his chambers Mr Tulkinghorn sits meditating=
an
application to the nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Grid=
ley,
a disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We are n=
ot
to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall be held to =
bail
again. From the ceiling, foreshortened Allegory, in the person of one
impossible Roman upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, =
and
an odd one) obtrusively toward the window. Why should Mr Tulkinghorn, for s=
uch
no reason, look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he
does not look out of window.
And if he did, what would it be to see a woman
going by? There are women enough in the world, Mr Tulkinghorn thinks--too m=
any;
they are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter=
of
that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a woman goi=
ng
by, even though she were going secretly? They are all secret. Mr Tulkinghorn
knows that very well.
But they are not all like the woman who now le=
aves
him and his house behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner
there is something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant=
by
her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and assumed--as
far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she treads with an
unaccustomed foot--she is a lady. Her face is veiled, and still she
sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her lo=
ok
round sharply.
She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she=
has
a purpose in her and can follow it. She never turns her head until she come=
s to
the crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs.
Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other side. T=
hen
she slightly beckons to him and says, ‘Come here!’
Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet cour=
t.
‘Are you the boy I've read of in the pap=
ers?’
she asked behind her veil.
‘I don't know,’ says Jo, staring
moodily at the veil, ‘nothink about no papers. I don't know nothink a=
bout
nothink at all.’
‘Were you examined at an inquest?’=
‘I don't know nothink about no--where I =
was
took by the beadle, do you mean?’ says Jo. ‘Was the boy's name =
at
the inkwhich Jo?’
‘Yes.’
‘That's me!’ says Jo.
‘Come farther up.’
‘You mean about the man?’ says Jo,
following. ‘Him as wos dead?’
‘Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he l=
ook,
when he was living, so very ill and poor?’
‘Oh, jist!’ says Jo.
‘Did he look like--not like YOU?’ =
says
the woman with abhorrence.
‘Oh, not so bad as me,’ says Jo. &=
#8216;I'm
a reg'lar one I am! You didn't know him, did you?’
‘How dare you ask me if I knew him?̵=
7;
‘No offence, my lady,’ says Jo with
much humility, for even he has got at the suspicion of her being a lady.
‘I am not a lady. I am a servant.’=
‘You are a jolly servant!’ says Jo
without the least idea of saying anything offensive, merely as a tribute of
admiration.
‘Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me,=
and
stand farther from me! Can you show me all those places that were spoken of=
in
the account I read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place
where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the
place where he was buried?’
Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as e=
ach
other place was mentioned.
‘Go before me and show me all those drea=
dful
places. Stop opposite to each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you.
Don't look back. Do what I want, and I will pay you well.’
Jo attends closely while the words are being
spoken; tells them off on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pause=
s to
consider their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head=
.
‘I'm fly,’ says Jo. ‘But fen
larks, you know. Stow hooking it!’
‘What does the horrible creature mean?=
8217;
exclaims the servant, recoiling from him.
‘Stow cutting away, you know!’ says
Jo.
‘I don't understand you. Go on before! I
will give you more money than you ever had in your life.’
Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives h=
is
ragged head a rub, takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing
deftly with his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire=
.
Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.
‘Who lives here?’
‘Him wot give him his writing and give me
half a bull,’ says Jo in a whisper without looking over his shoulder.=
‘Go on to the next.’
Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.=
‘Who lives here?’
‘HE lived here,’ Jo answers as bef=
ore.
After a silence he is asked, ‘In which r=
oom?’
‘In the back room up there. You can see =
the
winder from this corner. Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. Th=
is
is the public-ouse where I was took to.’
‘Go on to the next!’
It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relie=
ved
of his first suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not =
look
round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they come =
to
the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted now), and to the
iron gate.
‘He was put there,’ says Jo, holdi=
ng
to the bars and looking in.
‘Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!̵=
7;
‘There!’ says Jo, pointing. ‘=
;Over
yinder. Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! =
They
put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I
could unkiver it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they
locks it, I s'pose,’ giving it a shake. ‘It's always locked. Lo=
ok
at the rat!’ cries Jo, excited. ‘Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! I=
nto
the ground!’
The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corn=
er
of that hideous archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and
putting out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from he=
r,
for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands staring =
and
is still staring when she recovers herself.
‘Is this place of abomination consecrated
ground?’
‘I don't know nothink of consequential
ground,’ says Jo, still staring.
‘Is it blessed?’
‘Which?’ says Jo, in the last degr=
ee
amazed.
‘Is it blessed?’
‘I'm blest if I know,’ says Jo,
staring more than ever; ‘but I shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?̵=
7;
repeats Jo, something troubled in his mind. ‘It an't done it much goo=
d if
it is. Blest? I should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know noth=
ink!’
The servant takes as little heed of what he sa=
ys
as she seems to take of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove =
to
get some money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her =
hand
is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings.
She drops a piece of money in his hand without
touching it, and shuddering as their hands approach. ‘Now,’ she
adds, ‘show me the spot again!’
Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the
bars of the gate, and with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. =
At
length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds =
that
he is alone.
His first proceeding is to hold the piece of m=
oney
to the gas-light and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow--gold. =
His
next is to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality. H=
is
next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the step and passage w=
ith
great care. His job done, he sets off for Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the
light of innumerable gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold and give it ano=
ther
one-sided bite as a reassurance of its being genuine.
The Mercury in powder is in no want of society
to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir
Leicester is fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the
goat; he complains to Mrs Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous
pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the fireside =
in
his own snug dressing-room.
‘Sir Leicester would have done better to=
try
the other side of the house, my dear,’ says Mrs Rouncewell to Rosa. &=
#8216;His
dressing-room is on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the
step upon the Ghost's Walk more distinct than it is to-night!’
Richard very often came to see us while we
remained in London (though he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with =
his
quick abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshnes=
s,
was always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I kn=
ew
him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had
been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system whi=
ch
had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of
other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash =
through
his tasks, always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fit=
ful,
dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in him=
self
which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were good qualit=
ies,
without which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and wat=
er,
though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If they had been und=
er
Richard's direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being un=
der
their direction, they became his enemies.
I write down these opinions not because I beli=
eve
that this or any other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I
did think so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. The=
se
were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed besides how righ=
t my
guardian was in what he had said, and that the uncertainties and delays of =
the
Chancery suit had imparted to his nature something of the careless spirit o=
f a
gamester who felt that he was part of a great gaming system.
Mr and Mrs Bayham Badger coming one afternoon =
when
my guardian was not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inqu=
ired
after Richard.
‘Why, Mr Carstone,’ said Mrs Badge=
r, ‘is
very well and is, I assure you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain
Swosser used to say of me that I was always better than land a-head and a
breeze a-starn to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had become as
tough as the fore-topsel weather earings. It was his naval way of mentioning
generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may render the same
tribute, I am sure, to Mr Carstone. But I--you won't think me premature if I
mention it?’
I said no, as Mrs Badger's insinuating tone se=
emed
to require such an answer.
‘Nor Miss Clare?’ said Mrs Bayham =
Badger
sweetly.
Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy.
‘Why, you see, my dears,’ said Mrs
Badger, ‘--you'll excuse me calling you my dears?’
We entreated Mrs Badger not to mention it.
‘Because you really are, if I may take t=
he
liberty of saying so,’ pursued Mrs Badger, ‘so perfectly charmi=
ng.
You see, my dears, that although I am still young--or Mr Bayham Badger pays=
me
the compliment of saying so--’
‘No,’ Mr Badger called out like so=
me
one contradicting at a public meeting. ‘Not at all!’
‘Very well,’ smiled Mrs Badger, =
8216;we
will say still young.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Mr Badger.
‘My dears, though still young, I have had
many opportunities of observing young men. There were many such on board the
dear old Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosse=
r in
the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and befriending =
the
midshipmen under Captain Swosser's command. YOU never heard them called the
young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would not understand allusions to t=
heir
pipe-claying their weekly accounts, but it is otherwise with me, for blue w=
ater
has been a second home to me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with
Professor Dingo.’
‘A man of European reputation,’
murmured Mr Badger.
‘When I lost my dear first and became the
wife of my dear second,’ said Mrs Badger, speaking of her former husb=
ands
as if they were parts of a charade, ‘I still enjoyed opportunities of
observing youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a la=
rge
one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man seeki=
ng
herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to throw our hou=
se
open to the students as a kind of Scientific Exchange. Every Tuesday evening
there was lemonade and a mixed biscuit for all who chose to partake of those
refreshments. And there was science to an unlimited extent.’
‘Remarkable assemblies those, Miss
Summerson,’ said Mr Badger reverentially. ‘There must have been
great intellectual friction going on there under the auspices of such a man=
!’
‘And now,’ pursued Mrs Badger, =
216;now
that I am the wife of my dear third, Mr Badger, I still pursue those habits=
of
observation which were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and
adapted to new and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Din=
go.
I therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr Carstone as a neophyte.
And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his
profession advisedly.’
Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs
Badger on what she founded her supposition.
‘My dear Miss Summerson,’ she repl=
ied,
‘on Mr Carstone's character and conduct. He is of such a very easy
disposition that probably he would never think it worth-while to mention ho=
w he
really feels, but he feels languid about the profession. He has not that
positive interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided
impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a tiresome
pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr Allan Woodcourt who =
take
it from a strong interest in all that it can do will find some reward in it
through a great deal of work for a very little money and through years of
considerable endurance and disappointment. But I am quite convinced that th=
is
would never be the case with Mr Carstone.’
‘Does Mr Badger think so too?’ ask=
ed
Ada timidly.
‘Why,’ said Mr Badger, ‘to t=
ell
the truth, Miss Clare, this view of the matter had not occurred to me until=
Mrs
Badger mentioned it. But when Mrs Badger put it in that light, I naturally =
gave
great consideration to it, knowing that Mrs Badger's mind, in addition to i=
ts
natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by two such =
very
distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men as Captain Swosser of
the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The conclusion at which I have arrived
is--in short, is Mrs Badger's conclusion.’
‘It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's,=
217;
said Mrs Badger, ‘speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when =
you
make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to sw=
ab a
plank, you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me
that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical
profession.
‘To all professions,’ observed Mr
Badger. ‘It was admirably said by Captain Swosser. Beautifully said.&=
#8217;
‘People objected to Professor Dingo when=
we
were staying in the north of Devon after our marriage,’ said Mrs Badg=
er, ‘that
he disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragme=
nts
of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor repl=
ied
that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The principle is the
same, I think?’
‘Precisely the same,’ said Mr Badg=
er. ‘Finely
expressed! The professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last
illness, when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer
under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. The ru=
ling
passion!’
Although we could have dispensed with the leng=
th
at which Mr and Mrs Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it w=
as
disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to us and
that there was a great probability of its being sound. We agreed to say not=
hing
to Mr Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard; and as he was coming next
evening, we resolved to have a very serious talk with him.
So after he had been a little while with Ada, I
went in and found my darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider =
him
thoroughly right in whatever he said.
‘And how do you get on, Richard?’ =
said
I. I always sat down on the other side of him. He made quite a sister of me=
.
‘Oh! Well enough!’ said Richard.
‘He can't say better than that, Esther, =
can
he?’ cried my pet triumphantly.
I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner,
but of course I couldn't.
‘Well enough?’ I repeated.
‘Yes,’ said Richard, ‘well
enough. It's rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But it'll do as well as anything
else!’
‘Oh! My dear Richard!’ I remonstra=
ted.
‘What's the matter?’ said Richard.=
‘Do as well as anything else!’
‘I don't think there's any harm in that,
Dame Durden,’ said Ada, looking so confidingly at me across him; R=
16;because
if it will do as well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.’=
;
‘Oh, yes, I hope so,’ returned Ric=
hard,
carelessly tossing his hair from his forehead. ‘After all, it may be =
only
a kind of probation till our suit is--I forgot though. I am not to mention =
the
suit. Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it's all right enough. Let us talk about
something else.’
Ada would have done so willingly, and with a f=
ull
persuasion that we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. B=
ut I
thought it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.
‘No, but Richard,’ said I, ‘=
and
my dear Ada! Consider how important it is to you both, and what a point of
honour it is towards your cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in ear=
nest
without any reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada=
. It
will be too late very soon.’
‘Oh, yes! We must talk about it!’ =
said
Ada. ‘But I think Richard is right.’
What was the use of my trying to look wise when
she was so pretty, and so engaging, and so fond of him!
‘Mr and Mrs Badger were here yesterday,
Richard,’ said I, ‘and they seemed disposed to think that you h=
ad no
great liking for the profession.’
‘Did they though?’ said Richard. &=
#8216;Oh!
Well, that rather alters the case, because I had no idea that they thought =
so,
and I should not have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact i=
s, I
don't care much about it. But, oh, it don't matter! It'll do as well as
anything else!’
‘You hear him, Ada!’ said I.
‘The fact is,’ Richard proceeded, =
half
thoughtfully and half jocosely, ‘it is not quite in my way. I don't t=
ake
to it. And I get too much of Mrs Bayham Badger's first and second.’
‘I am sure THAT'S very natural!’ c=
ried
Ada, quite delighted. ‘The very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!=
’
‘Then,’ pursued Richard, ‘it=
's
monotonous, and to-day is too like yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-=
day.’
‘But I am afraid,’ said I, ‘=
this
is an objection to all kinds of application--to life itself, except under s=
ome
very uncommon circumstances.’
‘Do you think so?’ returned Richar=
d,
still considering. ‘Perhaps! Ha! Why, then, you know,’ he added,
suddenly becoming gay again, ‘we travel outside a circle to what I sa=
id
just now. It'll do as well as anything else. Oh, it's all right enough! Let=
us
talk about something else.’
But even Ada, with her loving face--and if it =
had
seemed innocent and trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November
fog, how much more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
heart--even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I thought it a
good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were sometimes a little care=
less
of himself, I was very sure he never meant to be careless of Ada, and that =
it
was a part of his affectionate consideration for her not to slight the
importance of a step that might influence both their lives. This made him
almost grave.
‘My dear Mother Hubbard,’ he said,=
‘that's
the very thing! I have thought of that several times and have been quite an=
gry
with myself for meaning to be so much in earnest and--somehow--not exactly
being so. I don't know how it is; I seem to want something or other to stand
by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling cousin, I love y=
ou,
so much!), but I don't settle down to constancy in other things. It's such
uphill work, and it takes such a time!’ said Richard with an air of
vexation.
‘That may be,’ I suggested, ‘=
;because
you don't like what you have chosen.’
‘Poor fellow!’ said Ada. ‘I =
am
sure I don't wonder at it!’
No. It was not of the least use my trying to l=
ook
wise. I tried again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect=
if
I could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while he
looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
‘You see, my precious girl,’ said
Richard, passing her golden curls through and through his hand, ‘I wa=
s a
little hasty perhaps; or I misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They
don't seem to lie in that direction. I couldn't tell till I tried. Now the
question is whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. It see=
ms
like making a great disturbance about nothing particular.’
‘My dear Richard,’ said I, ‘=
how
CAN you say about nothing particular?’
‘I don't mean absolutely that,’ he
returned. ‘I mean that it
Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that =
it
was decidedly worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be
undone. I then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
pursuit.
‘There, my dear Mrs Shipton,’ said
Richard, ‘you touch me home. Yes, I have. I have been thinking that t=
he
law is the boy for me.’
‘The law!’ repeated Ada as if she =
were
afraid of the name.
‘If I went into Kenge's office,’ s=
aid
Richard, ‘and if I were placed under articles to Kenge, I should have=
my
eye on the--hum!-- the forbidden ground--and should be able to study it, an=
d master
it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly
conducted. I should be able to look after Ada's interests and my own intere=
sts
(the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and all those fellows
with the most tremendous ardour.’
I was not by any means so sure of that, and I =
saw
how his hankering after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred
hopes cast a shade on Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him in=
any
project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure that =
his
mind was made up now.
‘My dear Minerva,’ said Richard, &=
#8216;I
am as steady as you are. I made a mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I
won't do so any more, and I'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. T=
hat
is, you know,’ said Richard, relapsing into doubt, ‘if it reall=
y is
worth-while, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular=
!’
This led to our saying again, with a great dea=
l of
gravity, all that we had said already and to our coming to much the same
conclusion afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and o=
pen
with Mr Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his disposition was natural=
ly
so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once (taking us with hi=
m)
and made a full avowal. ‘Rick,’ said my guardian, after hearing=
him
attentively, ‘we can retreat with honour, and we will. But we must be
careful--for our cousin's sake, Rick, for our cousin's sake--that we make no
more such mistakes. Therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a good
trial before we decide. We will look before we leap, and take plenty of time
about it.’
Richard's energy was of such an impatient and
fitful kind that he would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr
Kenge's office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on t=
he
spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we had sho=
wn
to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down among us in his
lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying purpose in life from
childhood had been that one which now held possession of him. My guardian w=
as
very kind and cordial with him, but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, w=
hen
he had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say, ‘Cousin Jo=
hn,
I hope you don't think the worse of Richard?’
‘No, my love,’ said he.
‘Because it was very natural that Richard
should be mistaken in such a difficult case. It is not uncommon.’
‘No, no, my love,’ said he. ‘=
;Don't
look unhappy.’
‘Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!̵=
7;
said Ada, smiling cheerfully, with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had
put it in bidding him good night. ‘But I should be a little so if you
thought at all the worse of Richard.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ̵=
6;I
should think the worse of him only if you were ever in the least unhappy
through his means. I should be more disposed to quarrel with myself even th=
en,
than with poor Rick, for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is noth=
ing!
He has time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not =
I,
my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!’
‘No, indeed, cousin John,’ said Ad=
a, ‘I
am sure I could not--I am sure I would not--think any ill of Richard if the
whole world did. I could, and I would, think better of him then than at any
other time!’
So quietly and honestly she said it, with her
hands upon his shoulders--both hands now--and looking up into his face, like
the picture of truth!
‘I think,’ said my guardian,
thoughtfully regarding her, ‘I think it must be somewhere written that
the virtues of the mothers shall occasionally be visited on the children, as
well as the sins of the father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little
woman. Pleasant slumbers! Happy dreams!’
This was the first time I ever saw him follow =
Ada
with his eyes with something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I =
well
remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard when she=
was
singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while since he had watch=
ed
them passing down the room in which the sun was shining, and away into the
shade; but his glance was changed, and even the silent look of confidence i=
n me
which now followed it once more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as =
it
had originally been.
Ada praised Richard more to me that night than
ever she had praised him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he h=
ad
given her clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I ki=
ssed
her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy she lo=
oked.
For I was so little inclined to sleep myself t=
hat
night that I sat up working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own s=
ake,
but I was wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least I don=
't
think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't think it matters.
At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadf=
ully
industrious that I would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be
low-spirited. For I naturally said, ‘Esther! You to be low-spirited. =
YOU!’
And it really was time to say so, for I--yes, I really did see myself in the
glass, almost crying. ‘As if you had anything to make you unhappy,
instead of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!’ said =
I.
If I could have made myself go to sleep, I wou=
ld
have done it directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my bask=
et
some ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy wit=
h at
that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was necessary to
count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to go on with it until I
couldn't keep my eyes open, and then to go to bed.
I soon found myself very busy. But I had left =
some
silk downstairs in a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and comin=
g to
a stop for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To =
my
great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and sitting
looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay unheeded by his
side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered confusedly upon his forehea=
d as
though his hand had been wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhe=
re,
and his face looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpecte=
dly,
I stood still for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he =
not,
in again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and starte=
d.
‘Esther!’
I told him what I had come for.
‘At work so late, my dear?’
‘I am working late to-night,’ said=
I, ‘because
I couldn't sleep and wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late
too, and look weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?’=
;
‘None, little woman, that YOU would read=
ily
understand,’ said he.
He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that=
I
inwardly repeated, as if that would help me to his meaning, ‘That I c=
ould
readily understand!’
‘Remain a moment, Esther,’ said he=
, ‘You
were in my thoughts.’
‘I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?=
’
He slightly waved his hand and fell into his u=
sual
manner. The change was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of=
so
much self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, ‘None
that I could understand!’
‘Little woman,’ said my guardian, =
‘I
was thinking--that is, I have been thinking since I have been sitting
here--that you ought to know of your own history all I know. It is very lit=
tle.
Next to nothing.’
‘Dear guardian,’ I replied, ‘=
;when
you spoke to me before on that subject--’
‘But since then,’ he gravely
interposed, anticipating what I meant to say, ‘I have reflected that =
your
having anything to ask me, and my having anything to tell you, are different
considerations, Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I
know.’
‘If you think so, guardian, it is right.=
’
‘I think so,’ he returned very gen=
tly,
and kindly, and very distinctly. ‘My dear, I think so now. If any real
disadvantage can attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman wo=
rth
a thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not magnif=
y it
to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature.’
I sat down and said after a little effort to b=
e as
calm as I ought to be, ‘One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is=
of
these words: 'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The
time will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and =
will
feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'‘ I had covered my face with=
my
hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a better kind of
shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the blessing that I had from=
my
childhood to that hour never, never, never felt it. He put up his hand as i=
f to
stop me. I well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
‘Nine years, my dear,’ he said aft=
er
thinking for a little while, ‘have passed since I received a letter f=
rom
a lady living in seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that
rendered it unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me=
(as
it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer's idiosyncr=
asy
to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to justify it. It told=
me
of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words =
as
those which live in your remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred h=
er
in secrecy from her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and =
that
if the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be left
entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to consider if I wo=
uld,
in that case, finish what the writer had begun.’
I listened in silence and looked attentively at
him.
‘Your early recollection, my dear, will
supply the gloomy medium through which all this was seen and expressed by t=
he
writer, and the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions =
of
the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was qui=
te
innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life, a=
nd
replied to the letter.’
I took his hand and kissed it.
‘It laid the injunction on me that I sho=
uld
never propose to see the writer, who had long been estranged from all
intercourse with the world, but who would see a confidential agent if I wou=
ld
appoint one. I accredited Mr Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and no=
t of
his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there were =
any
ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. That more than this she wou=
ld
never (and he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution) for
any human consideration disclose. My dear, I have told you all.’
I held his hand for a little while in mine.
‘I saw my ward oftener than she saw me,&=
#8217;
he added, cheerily making light of it, ‘and I always knew she was
beloved, useful, and happy. She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty m=
ore
to that, every hour in every day!’
‘And oftener still,’ said I, ̵=
6;she
blesses the guardian who is a father to her!’
At the word father, I saw his former trouble c=
ome
into his face. He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but =
it
had been there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if t=
hey
had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, ‘That I
could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!’ No, =
it
was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.
‘Take a fatherly good night, my dear,=
217;
said he, kissing me on the forehead, ‘and so to rest. These are late
hours for working and thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, li=
ttle
housekeeper!’
I neither worked nor thought any more that nig=
ht.
I opened my grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to =
me
and its care of me, and fell asleep.
We had a visitor next day. Mr Allan Woodcourt
came. He came to take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He w=
as
going to China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a
long, long time.
I believe--at least I know--that he was not ri=
ch.
All his widowed mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his
profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very little
influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at the service of
numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness and skill for them, he
gained very little by it in money. He was seven years older than I. Not tha=
t I
need mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything.
I think--I mean, he told us--that he had been =
in
practice three or four years and that if he could have hoped to contend thr=
ough
three or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was bound.
But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going away. He had be=
en
to see us several times altogether. We thought it a pity he should go away.
Because he was distinguished in his art among those who knew it best, and s=
ome
of the greatest men belonging to it had a high opinion of him.
When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his
mother with him for the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright
black eyes, but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long t=
ime
ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan ap- Kerrig--of
some place that sounded like Gimlet--who was the most illustrious person th=
at
ever was known and all of whose relations were a sort of royal family. He
appeared to have passed his life in always getting up into mountains and
fighting somebody; and a bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had =
sung
his praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,
Mewlinnwillinwodd.
Mrs Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the =
fame
of her great kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he wou=
ld
remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below it. She
told him that there were many handsome English ladies in India who went out=
on
speculation, and that there were some to be picked up with property, but th=
at
neither charms nor wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a line
without birth, which must ever be the first consideration. She talked so mu=
ch
about birth that for a moment I half fancied, and with pain-- But what an i=
dle
fancy to suppose that she could think or care what MINE was!
Mr Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her
prolixity, but he was too considerate to let her see it and contrived
delicately to bring the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to=
my
guardian for his hospitality and for the very happy hours--he called them t=
he
very happy hours--he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he said,
would go with him wherever he went and would be always treasured. And so we
gave him our hands, one after another--at least, they did--and I did; and s=
o he
put his lips to Ada's hand--and to mine; and so he went away upon his long,
long voyage!
I was very busy indeed all day and wrote
directions home to the servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted
his books and papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way=
and
another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by the
window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no expectation of see=
ing!
‘Why, Caddy, my dear,’ said I, =
216;what
beautiful flowers!’
She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her
hand.
‘Indeed, I think so, Esther,’ repl=
ied
Caddy. ‘They are the loveliest I ever saw.’
‘Prince, my dear?’ said I in a
whisper.
‘No,’ answered Caddy, shaking her =
head
and holding them to me to smell. ‘Not Prince.’
‘Well, to be sure, Caddy!’ said I.=
‘You
must have two lovers!’
‘What? Do they look like that sort of th=
ing?’
said Caddy.
‘Do they look like that sort of thing?=
8217;
I repeated, pinching her cheek.
Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me t=
hat
she had come for half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would=
be
waiting for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window,
every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they looked
against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into my room and =
put
them in my dress.
‘For me?’ said I, surprised.
‘For you,’ said Caddy with a kiss.=
‘They
were left behind by somebody.’
‘Left behind?’
‘At poor Miss Flite's,’ said Caddy=
. ‘Somebody
who has been very good to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship =
and
left these flowers behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the pretty litt=
le
things lie here,’ said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand, =
216;because
I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if somebody left them on purpo=
se!’
‘Do they look like that sort of thing?=
8217;
said Ada, coming laughingly behind me and clasping me merrily round the wai=
st. ‘Oh,
yes, indeed they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of th=
ing.
Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!’
It was not so easy as it had appeared at first=
to
arrange for Richard's making a trial of Mr Kenge's office. Richard himself =
was
the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr Badger =
at
any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave him at all. He did=
n't
know, he said, really. It wasn't a bad profession; he couldn't assert that =
he
disliked it; perhaps he liked it as well as he liked any other--suppose he =
gave
it one more chance! Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some
books and some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of informati=
on
with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began to coo=
l,
and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His vacillations
between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer arrived before he
finally separated from Mr Badger and entered on an experimental course of
Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his waywardness, he took great credit to
himself as being determined to be in earnest ‘this time.’ And he
was so good-natured throughout, and in such high spirits, and so fond of Ad=
a,
that it was very difficult indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.
‘As to Mr Jarndyce,’ who, I may
mention, found the wind much given, during this period, to stick in the eas=
t; ‘As
to Mr Jarndyce,’ Richard would say to me, ‘he is the finest fel=
low
in the world, Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for h=
is
satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up of this
business now.’
The idea of his taking himself well to task, w=
ith
that laughing face and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything cou=
ld
catch and nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us
between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he wondered his =
hair
didn't turn grey. His regular wind-up of the business was (as I have said) =
that
he went to Mr Kenge's about midsummer to try how he liked it.
All this time he was, in money affairs, what I
have described him in a former illustration--generous, profuse, wildly
careless, but fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I
happened to say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, ab=
out
the time of his going to Mr Kenge's, that he needed to have Fortunatus' pur=
se,
he made so light of money, which he answered in this way, ‘My jewel o=
f a
dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why does she say that? Because I gave
eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and butt=
ons
a few days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger's I should have been obliged=
to
spend twelve pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I ma=
ke
four pounds--in a lump--by the transaction!’
It was a question much discussed between him a=
nd
my guardian what arrangements should be made for his living in London while=
he
experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak House, an=
d it
was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener than once a week. My
guardian told me that if Richard were to settle down at Mr Kenge's he would
take some apartments or chambers where we too could occasionally stay for a=
few
days at a time; ‘but, little woman,’ he added, rubbing his head
very significantly, ‘he hasn't settled down there yet!’ The
discussions ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnis=
hed
lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately began to spe=
nd
all the money he had in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for
this lodging; and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purch=
ase
that he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and expensi=
ve,
he took credit for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anyth=
ing
less on something else was to save the difference.
While these affairs were in abeyance, our visi=
t to
Mr Boythorn's was postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of =
his
lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone wit=
h us
at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his n=
ew
position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of=
the
fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted =
to
praise him for being so busy.
We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnsh=
ire
by the coach and had an entertaining companion in Mr Skimpole. His furniture
had been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of=
it
on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to think
that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome objects; they w=
ere
monotonous ideas, they had no variety of expression, they looked you out of
countenance, and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to=
be
bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly amo=
ng
all the furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from
mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took one!
‘The oddity of the thing is,’ said=
Mr
Skimpole with a quickened sense of the ludicrous, ‘that my chairs and
tables were not paid for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as compos=
edly
as possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The
chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why shou=
ld
my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose which is
disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no
business to scratch my chair and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple=
on
it. His reasoning seems defective!’
‘Well,’ said my guardian
good-humouredly, ‘it's pretty clear that whoever became security for
those chairs and tables will have to pay for them.’
‘Exactly!’ returned Mr Skimpole. &=
#8216;That's
the crowning point of unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My =
good
man, you are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay f=
or
those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner. Have you =
no
consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the least.’
‘And refused all proposals,’ said =
my
guardian.
‘Refused all proposals,’ returned =
Mr
Skimpole. ‘I made him business proposals. I had him into my room. I s=
aid,
'You are a man of business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,' sa=
id
I, 'now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and pap=
er,
here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house for a
considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until this unplea=
sant
misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly and business-like. What =
do
you want?' In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression--which
has something Eastern about it--that he had never seen the colour of my mon=
ey. 'My
amiable friend,' said I, 'I never have any money. I never know anything abo=
ut
money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer if I give you time?' 'My g=
ood
fellow,' said I, 'I have no idea of time; but you say you are a man of
business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way wi=
th
pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--I am ready to do. Don't pay yourself at
another man's expense (which is foolish), but be business-like!' However, he
wouldn't be, and there was an end of it.’
If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr
Skimpole's childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the jou=
rney
he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (includ=
ing
a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for anyth=
ing.
So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he
considered a very good fee indeed, now--a liberal one--and on his replying =
half
a crown for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things c=
onsidered,
and left Mr Jarndyce to give it him.
It was delightful weather. The green corn wave=
d so
beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild
flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a lig=
ht
wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! Lat=
e in
the afternoon we came to the market- town where we were to alight from the
coach--a dull little town with a church-spire, and a marketplace, and a
market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse
cooling his legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing abou=
t in
narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and the wavin=
g of
the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a li=
ttle
town as England could produce.
At the inn we found Mr Boythorn on horseback,
waiting with an open carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles
off. He was overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.
‘By heaven!’ said he after giving =
us a
courteous greeting. ‘This a most infamous coach. It is the most flagr=
ant
example of an abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the
earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachma=
n ought
to be put to death!’
‘IS he after his time?’ said Mr
Skimpole, to whom he happened to address himself. ‘You know my infirm=
ity.’
‘Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes=
!’
replied Mr Boythorn, referring to his watch. ‘With two ladies in the
coach, this scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty
minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his
father--and his uncle--were the most profligate coachmen that ever sat upon=
a
box.’
While he said this in tones of the greatest
indignation, he handed us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness
and was all smiles and pleasure.
‘I am sorry, ladies,’ he said,
standing bare-headed at the carriage-door when all was ready, ‘that I=
am
obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road
lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I =
have
sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending the prese=
nt
relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!’ And here,
catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of his tremendous laughs, whi=
ch
seemed to shake even the motionless little market-town.
‘Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?=
8217;
said my guardian as we drove along and Mr Boythorn trotted on the green tur=
f 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 alw=
ays
made a courtly gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in t=
he
quarrel, ‘is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surpri=
sed
that she postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have
induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head of a
baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human
inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!’
‘I suppose,’ said my guardian,
laughing, ‘WE may set foot in the park while we are here? The prohibi=
tion
does not extend to us, does it?’
‘I can lay no prohibition on my guests,&=
#8217;
he said, bending his head to Ada and me with the smiling politeness which s=
at
so gracefully upon him, ‘except in the matter of their departure. I am
only sorry that I cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Che=
sney
Wold, which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,
Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are likely=
to
have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an eight-day clock at all
times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never =
go
and never went--Ha ha ha!--but he will have some extra stiffness, I can pro=
mise
you, for the friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!’
‘I shall not put him to the proof,’
said my guardian. ‘He is as indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I
dare say, as I am to the honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and
perhaps such a view of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite
enough for me.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Boythorn. ‘I=
am
glad of it on the whole. It's in better keeping. I am looked upon about her=
e as
a second Ajax defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little
church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation
expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Ded=
lock
displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For=
he
is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most
coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!’
Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been
ascending enabled our friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and
diverted his attention from its master.
It was a picturesque old house in a fine park
richly wooded. Among the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out
the spire of the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods
over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings were
sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth green slop=
es,
the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were so symmetrically
arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how beautiful they looked! The
house, with gable and chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and
broad terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying heaped
upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in=
its
light solidity and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around
it. To Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On
everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, mo=
ss,
woods again, and far away across the openings in the prospect to the distan=
ce
lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such
undisturbed repose.
When we came into the little village and passe=
d a
small inn with the sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front=
, Mr
Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a bench
outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside him.
‘That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr
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.
‘Why, my dear Miss Clare,’ he
returned, ‘I think they may perhaps understand each other; but you wi=
ll
see them soon, I dare say, and I must learn from you on such a point--not y=
ou
from me.’
Ada blushed, and Mr Boythorn, trotting forward=
on
his comely grey horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with exte=
nded
arm and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parso=
nage
house, with a lawn in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-
stocked orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable w=
all
that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything about the
place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old lime-tree walk was =
like
green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were
heavy with fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches
arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in li=
ke
profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled about
among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and winking in the sun
there were such heaps of drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that ev=
ery
foot of ground appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs
and all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meado=
ws
where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such stilln=
ess
and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the old red wall that
even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the birds hardly stirred; and t=
he
wall had such a ripening influence that where, here and there high up, a
disused nail and scrap of list still clung to it, it was easy to fancy that
they had mellowed with the changing seasons and that they had rusted and
decayed according to the common fate.
The house, though a little disorderly in
comparison with the garden, was a real old house with settles in the chimne=
y of
the brick-floored kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side =
of
it was the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr Boythorn maintaine=
d a
sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was supposed to be, in ca=
ses
of aggression, immediately to ring a large bell hung up there for the purpo=
se,
to unchain a great bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and genera=
lly
to deal destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr
Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to which =
his
name was attached in large letters, the following solemn warnings: ‘B=
eware
of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence Boythorn.’ ‘The
blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn.’ ‘Man-traps=
and
spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and night. Lawrence Boytho=
rn.’
‘Take notice. That any person or persons audaciously presuming to
trespass on this property will be punished with the utmost severity of priv=
ate
chastisement and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence
Boythorn.’ These he showed us from the drawing-room window, while his
bird was hopping about his head, and he laughed, ‘Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha =
ha
ha!’ to that extent as he pointed them out that I really thought he w=
ould
have hurt himself.
‘But this is taking a good deal of troub=
le,’
said Mr Skimpole in his light way, ‘when you are not in earnest after
all.’
‘Not in earnest!’ returned Mr Boyt=
horn
with unspeakable warmth. ‘Not in earnest! If I could have hoped to tr=
ain
him, I would have bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned h=
im
loose upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroach=
ment
on my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide this
question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon known to man=
kind
in any age or country. I am that much in earnest. Not more!’
We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the
Sunday morning we all set forth to walk to the little church in the park.
Entering the park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful trees un=
til
it brought us to the church-porch.
The congregation was extremely small and quite=
a
rustic one with the exception of a large muster of servants from the house,
some of whom were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in.
There were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old
coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all the p=
omps
and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There was a very pretty
show of young women, and above them, the handsome old face and fine respons=
ible
portly figure of the housekeeper towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of wh=
om Mr
Boythorn had told us was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might =
have
known her by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she=
was
of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off. One face,
and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchf=
ul
of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and everything there. It was a
Frenchwoman's.
As the bell was yet ringing and the great peop=
le
were not yet come, I had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as
earthy as a grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church=
it
was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light that ma=
de
the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in the pavement and =
the
time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the sunshine in the little porch,
where a monotonous ringer was working at the bell, inestimably bright. But a
stir in that direction, a gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces,=
and
a blandly ferocious assumption on the part of Mr Boythorn of being resolute=
ly
unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me that the great people were
come and that the service was going to begin.
‘'Enter not into judgment with thy serva=
nt,
O Lord, for in thy sight--'‘
Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my he=
art,
occasioned by the look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner =
in
which those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and to
hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down--released again, if=
I
may say so--on my book; but I knew the beautiful face quite well in that sh=
ort
space of time.
And, very strangely, there was something quick=
ened
within me, associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away eve=
n to
the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little glass afte=
r dressing
my doll. And this, although I had never seen this lady's face before in all=
my
life--I was quite sure of it-- absolutely certain.
It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gout=
y,
grey-haired gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her face sho=
uld
be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of =
old
remembrances, and why I should be so fluttered and troubled (for I was stil=
l)
by having casually met her eyes, I could not think.
I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and
tried to overcome it by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangel=
y, I
seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well- remembered
voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face accident=
ally
resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a little; but the express=
ion
was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my godmother's
face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before=
me
that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I kn=
ow
the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at all, in any one. A=
nd
yet I--I, little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on
whose birthday there was no rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own eyes,
evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not o=
nly
entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly well knew I=
had
never seen until that hour.
It made me tremble so to be thrown into this
unaccountable agitation that I was conscious of being distressed even by the
observation of the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchful=
ly
here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the chu=
rch.
By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange emotion. Afte=
r a
long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It was while they were
preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no heed of me, and the beati=
ng
at my heart was gone. Neither did it revive for more than a few moments when
she once or twice afterwards glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave
his arm with much taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock--though he was oblige=
d to
walk by the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the po=
ny
carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so did the
congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along (Mr Skimpole sa=
id
to Mr Boythorn's infinite delight) as if he were a considerable landed
proprietor in heaven.
‘He believes he is!’ said Mr Boyth=
orn.
‘He firmly believes it. So did his father, and his grandfather, and h=
is
great-grandfather!’
‘Do you know,’ pursued Mr Skimpole
very unexpectedly to Mr Boythorn, ‘it's agreeable to me to see a man =
of
that sort.’
‘IS it!’ said Mr Boythorn.
‘Say that he wants to patronize me,̵=
7;
pursued Mr Skimpole. ‘Very well! I don't object.’
‘I do,’ said Mr Boythorn with grea=
t vigour.
‘Do you really?’ returned Mr Skimp=
ole
in his easy light vein. ‘But that's taking trouble, surely. And why
should you take trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly as
they fall out, and I never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, an=
d I
find a mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate,
here IS my homage! It's easier to give it than to withhold it. Here it is. =
If
you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see
it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happ=
y to
accept it.' Mighty potentate replies in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow.=
I
find him accord with my digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose =
upon
me the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points outwar=
d. I
expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud, and it=
's
more agreeable to both of us.' That's my view of such things, speaking as a
child!’
‘But suppose you went down somewhere els=
e to-morrow,’
said Mr Boythorn, ‘where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of
this fellow. How then?’
‘How then?’ said Mr Skimpole with =
an
appearance of the utmost simplicity and candour. ‘Just the same then!=
I
should say, 'My esteemed Boythorn'--to make you the personification of our
imaginary friend--'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate?
Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system is to be
agreeable; I take it that everybody's business in the social system is to be
agreeable. It's a system of harmony, in short. Therefore if you object, I
object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go to dinner!'‘
‘But excellent Boythorn might say,’
returned our host, swelling and growing very red, ‘I'll be--’
‘I understand,’ said Mr Skimpole. =
‘Very
likely he would.’
‘--if I WILL go to dinner!’ cried =
Mr
Boythorn in a violent burst and stopping to strike his stick upon the groun=
d. ‘And
he would probably add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr Harold
Skimpole?'‘
‘To which Harold Skimpole would reply, y=
ou
know,’ he returned in his gayest manner and with his most ingenuous
smile, ‘'Upon my life I have not the least idea! I don't know what it=
is
you call by that name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess =
it
and find it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.
But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and I lay=
no
claim to it, and I don't want it!' So, you see, excellent Boythorn and I wo=
uld
go to dinner after all!’
This was one of many little dialogues between =
them
which I always expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under
other circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But=
he
had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as our
entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr Skimpole, =
as a
child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long, that matters never went
beyond this point. Mr Skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious of havi=
ng
been on delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in the
park which he never finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano,=
or
to singing scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and
looking at the sky--which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was what he w=
as
meant for; it suited him so exactly.
‘Enterprise and effort,’ he would =
say
to us (on his back), ‘are delightful to me. I believe I am truly
cosmopolitan. I have the deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place
like this and think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or
penetrating to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary
creatures ask, 'What is the use of a man's going to the North Pole? What go=
od
does it do?' I can't say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for the
purpose--though he don't know it--of employing my thoughts as I lie here. T=
ake
an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on American plantations. I dare
say they are worked hard, I dare say they don't altogether like it. I dare =
say
theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the landsc=
ape
for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasa=
nter
objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I shoul=
dn't
wonder if it were!’
I always wondered on these occasions whether he
ever thought of Mrs Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view th=
ey
presented themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,
they rarely presented themselves at all.
The week had gone round to the Saturday follow=
ing
that beating of my heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and
blue that to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among =
the
transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the shado=
ws
of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the air was drowsy
with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We had one favourite spo=
t,
deep in moss and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from
which the bark was all stripped off. Seated among these, we looked through a
green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of
trees, upon a distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the sha=
de
in which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through whic=
h we
saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon the Saturday we =
sat
here, Mr Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in the dist=
ance
and felt the large raindrops rattle through the leaves.
The weather had been all the week extremely
sultry, but the storm broke so suddenly--upon us, at least, in that shelter=
ed
spot--that before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and
lightning were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if
every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for standing among
trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the moss-grown steps which
crossed the plantation-fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to b=
ack,
and made for a keeper's lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed=
the
dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the=
ivy
clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we had once=
seen
the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were water.
The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was
overcast, that we only clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took
shelter there and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were a=
ll
thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm. It was
grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain bef=
ore
it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder and to see the
lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our
little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are and how u=
pon
the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all =
this
seeming rage which seemed to make creation new again.
‘Is it not dangerous to sit in so expose=
d a
place?’
‘Oh, no, Esther dear!’ said Ada
quietly.
Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.
The beating of my heart came back again. I had
never heard the voice, as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in =
the
same strange way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable
pictures of myself.
Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge be=
fore
our arrival there and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my
chair with her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder w=
hen
I turned my head.
‘I have frightened you?’ she said.=
No. It was not fright. Why should I be frighte=
ned!
‘I believe,’ said Lady Dedlock to =
my
guardian, ‘I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr Jarndyce.’
‘Your remembrance does me more honour th=
an I
had supposed it would, Lady Dedlock,’ he returned.
‘I recognized you in church on Sunday. I=
am
sorry that any local disputes of Sir Leicester's--they are not of his seeki=
ng,
however, I believe--should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to =
show
you any attention here.’
‘I am aware of the circumstances,’
returned my guardian with a smile, ‘and am sufficiently obliged.̵=
7;
She had given him her hand in an indifferent w=
ay
that seemed habitual to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent mann=
er,
though in a very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,
perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able to attr=
act
and interest any one if she had thought it worth her while. The keeper had
brought her a chair on which she sat in the middle of the porch between us.=
‘Is the young gentleman disposed of whom=
you
wrote to Sir Leicester about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to
have it in his power to advance in any way?’ she said over her should=
er
to my guardian.
‘I hope so,’ said he.
She seemed to respect him and even to wish to
conciliate him. There was something very winning in her haughty manner, and=
it
became more familiar--I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly
be--as she spoke to him over her shoulder.
‘I presume this is your other ward, Miss
Clare?’
He presented Ada, in form.
‘You will lose the disinterested part of
your Don Quixote character,’ said Lady Dedlock to Mr Jarndyce over her
shoulder again, ‘if you only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. =
But
present me,’ and she turned full upon me, ‘to this young lady t=
oo!’
‘Miss Summerson really is my ward,’
said Mr Jarndyce. ‘I am responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case=
.’
‘Has Miss Summerson lost both her parent=
s?’
said my Lady.
‘Yes.’
‘She is very fortunate in her guardian.&=
#8217;
Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her=
and
said I was indeed. All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost
expressive of displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder ag=
ain.
‘Ages have passed since we were in the h=
abit
of meeting, Mr Jarndyce.’
‘A long time. At least I thought it was a
long time, until I saw you last Sunday,’ he returned.
‘What! Even you are a courtier, or think=
it
necessary to become one to me!’ she said with some disdain. ‘I =
have
achieved that reputation, I suppose.’
‘You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock=
,’
said my guardian, ‘that you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But =
none
to me.’
‘So much!’ she repeated, slightly
laughing. ‘Yes!’
With her air of superiority, and power, and
fascination, and I know not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little
more than children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking =
at
the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself with her =
own
thoughts as if she had been alone.
‘I think you knew my sister when we were
abroad together better than you know me?’ she said, looking at him ag=
ain.
‘Yes, we happened to meet oftener,’=
; he
returned.
‘We went our several ways,’ said L=
ady
Dedlock, ‘and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. I=
t is
to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.’
Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The
storm soon began to pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the light=
ning
ceased, the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to
glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there, silently, =
we
saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry pace.
‘The messenger is coming back, my Lady,&=
#8217;
said the keeper, ‘with the carriage.’
As it drove up, we saw that there were two peo=
ple
inside. There alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the
Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl, the
Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused and hesitat=
ing.
‘What now?’ said Lady Dedlock. =
216;Two!’
‘I am your maid, my Lady, at the present=
,’
said the Frenchwoman. ‘The message was for the attendant.’
‘I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady=
,’
said the pretty girl.
‘I did mean you, child,’ replied h=
er
mistress calmly. ‘Put that shawl on me.’
She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive =
it,
and the pretty girl lightly dropped it in its place. 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. Y=
ou
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 offe=
r,
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!’
The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman,
with the wrappers she had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing w=
here
she had alighted.
I suppose there is nothing pride can so little
bear with as pride itself, and that she was punished for her imperious mann=
er.
Her retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained
perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and then, wit=
hout
the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on =
the ground,
and walked deliberately in the same direction through the wettest of the wet
grass.
‘Is that young woman mad?’ said my
guardian.
‘Oh, no, sir!’ said the keeper, wh=
o,
with his wife, was looking after her. ‘Hortense is not one of that so=
rt.
She has as good a head-piece as the best. But she's mortal high and
passionate-- powerful high and passionate; and what with having notice to
leave, and having others put above her, she don't take kindly to it.’=
‘But why should she walk shoeless through
all that water?’ said my guardian.
‘Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool =
her
down!’ said the man.
‘Or unless she fancies it's blood,’
said the woman. ‘She'd as soon walk through that as anything else, I
think, when her own's up!’
We passed not far from the house a few minutes
afterwards. Peaceful as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even =
more
so now, with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,=
the
birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed by the la=
te
rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like a fairy carriage =
made
of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly walking towards it, a peacef=
ul
figure too in the landscape, went Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through =
the
wet grass.
It is the long vacation in the regions of Chan=
cery
Lane. The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iro=
n-
fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid=
up
in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring =
all
whom they may encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time
being, heaven knows where. The courts are all shut up; the public offices l=
ie
in a hot sleep. Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightinga=
les
might sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there, wa=
lk.
The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and
Lincoln's Inn even unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, wh=
ere
stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided
stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of Term =
sets
in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. Outer doors of
chambers are shut up by the score, messages and parcels are to be left at t=
he
Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of grass would grow in the chinks of t=
he
stone pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who
have nothing to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white apro=
ns
over their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it thoughtfully.=
There is only one judge in town. Even he only
comes twice a week to sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize
towns on his circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red
petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved
gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea- bronze on the judici=
al
countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the judicial
nose, who calls in at the shell- fish shop as he comes along and drinks iced
ginger-beer!
The bar of England is scattered over the face =
of
the earth. How England can get on through four long summer months without i=
ts
bar --which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only legitimate
triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly that shield and
buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The learned gentleman who is
always so tremendously indignant at the unprecedented outrage committed on =
the
feelings of his client by the opposite party that he never seems likely to
recover it is doing infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland.
The learned gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all
opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French
watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the smallest
provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very learned gentleman=
who
has cooled the natural heat of his gingery complexion in pools and fountain=
s of
law until he has become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he po=
ses
the drowsy bench with legal ‘chaff,’ inexplicable to the
uninitiated and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteri=
stic
delight in aridity and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragment=
s of
the same great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the se=
cond
cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand
all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be encountered in the desert=
ed
region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely member of the bar do flit across =
the
waste and come upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave off haunting t=
he
scenes of his anxiety, they frighten one another and retreat into opposite =
shades.
It is the hottest long vacation known for many
years. All the young clerks are madly in love, and according to their vario=
us
degrees, pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or
Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large. All t=
he
unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about staircases and
other dry places seeking water give short howls of aggravation. All the bli=
nd
men's dogs in the streets draw their masters against pumps or trip them ove=
r buckets.
A shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and sil=
ver
fish in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to t=
he
adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and keeps them
simmering all night.
There are offices about the Inns of Court in w=
hich
a man might be cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price =
in
dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those retirements
seem to blaze. In Mr Krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn their
houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the pavement--Mr Krook included, w=
ho
there pursues his studies, with his cat (who never is too hot) by his side.=
The
Sol's Arms has discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little
Swills is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes ou=
t in
quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile complexion
calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of the most fastidi=
ous
mind.
Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, =
like
some great veil of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of=
the
long vacation. Mr Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, =
is
sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a sympathetic and
contemplative man, but also in his business as a law-stationer aforesaid. He
has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn and in the Rolls Yard during the =
long
vacation than at other seasons, and he says to the two 'prentices, what a t=
hing
it is in such hot weather to think that you live in an island with the sea
a-rolling and a-bowling right round you.
Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on t=
his
present afternoon in the long vacation, when Mr and Mrs Snagsby have it in
contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather select than
numerous, being Mr and Mrs Chadband and no more. From Mr Chadband's being m=
uch
given to describe himself, both verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is
occasionally mistaken by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigatio=
n,
but he is, as he expresses it, ‘in the ministry.’ Mr Chadband is
attached to no particular denomination and is considered by his persecutors=
to
have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to re=
nder
his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience; b=
ut
he has his followers, and Mrs Snagsby is of the number. Mrs Snagsby has but
recently taken a passage upward by the vessel, Chadband; and her attention =
was
attracted to that Bark A 1, when she was something flushed by the hot weath=
er.
‘My little woman,’ says Mr Snagsby=
to
the sparrows in Staple Inn, ‘likes to have her religion rather sharp,=
you
see!’
So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself=
for
the time as the handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the
gift of holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little
drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the portraits=
of Mr
and Mrs Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth, the best tea-service is set
forth, and there is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty
twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, =
and
delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-l=
aid
eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadba=
nd
is rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a gorging vessel--and can
wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably well.
Mr Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the
preparations when they are completed and coughing his cough of deference be=
hind
his hand, says to Mrs Snagsby, ‘At what time did you expect Mr and Mrs
Chadband, my love?’
‘At six,’ says Mrs Snagsby.
Mr Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way t=
hat ‘it's
gone that.’
‘Perhaps you'd like to begin without the=
m,’
is Mrs Snagsby's reproachful remark.
Mr Snagsby does look as if he would like it ve=
ry
much, but he says, with his cough of mildness, ‘No, my dear, no. I me=
rely
named the time.’
‘What's time,’ says Mrs Snagsby, &=
#8216;to
eternity?’
‘Very true, my dear,’ says Mr Snag=
sby.
‘Only when a person lays in victuals for tea, a person does it with a
view--perhaps--more to time. And when a time is named for having tea, it's
better to come up to it.’
‘To come up to it!’ Mrs Snagsby
repeats with severity. ‘Up to it! As if Mr Chadband was a fighter!=
217;
‘Not at all, my dear,’ says Mr
Snagsby.
Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the
bedroom window, comes rustling and scratching down the little staircase lik=
e a
popular ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr=
and
Mrs Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner door in the
passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is admonished by Mrs Snagsby, =
on
pain of instant reconsignment to her patron saint, not to omit the ceremony=
of
announcement. Much discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the =
best
order) by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to
announce ‘Mr and Mrs Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay, whatsernam=
e!’
and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.
Mr Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat s=
mile
and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. =
Mrs
Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr Chadband moves softly=
and
cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is ve=
ry
much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him and he
wanted to grovel, is very much in a perspiration about the head, and never
speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his
hearers that he is going to edify them.
‘My friends,’ says Mr Chadband, =
8216;peace
be on this house! On the master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the yo=
ung
maidens, and on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is
peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and
beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my
friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.’
In consequence of Mrs Snagsby looking deeply
edified, Mr Snagsby thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is =
well
received.
‘Now, my friends,’ proceeds Mr
Chadband, ‘since I am upon this theme--’
Guster presents herself. Mrs Snagsby, in a spe=
ctral
bass voice and without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful
distinctness, ‘Go away!’
‘Now, my friends,’ says Chadband, =
‘since
I am upon this theme, and in my lowly path improving it--’
Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur ‘=
;one
thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.’ The spectral voice repeats mo=
re
solemnly, ‘Go away!’
‘Now, my friends,’ says Mr Chadban=
d, ‘we
will inquire in a spirit of love--’
Still Guster reiterates ‘one thousing se=
ven
hundred and eighty- two.’
Mr Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a=
man
accustomed to be persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat
smile, says, ‘Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!’
‘One thousing seven hundred and eighty-t=
wo,
if you please, sir. Which he wish to know what the shilling ware for,’
says Guster, breathless.
‘For?’ returns Mrs Chadband. ̵=
6;For
his fare!’
Guster replied that ‘he insistes on one =
and
eightpence or on summonsizzing the party.’ Mrs Snagsby and Mrs Chadba=
nd
are proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr Chadband quiets the tu=
mult
by lifting up his hand.
‘My friends,’ says he, ‘I
remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It is right that I should be chasten=
ed
in some penalty. I ought not to murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!’=
While Mrs Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks h=
ard
at Mr Snagsby, as who should say, ‘You hear this apostle!’ and
while Mr Chadband glows with humility and train oil, Mrs Chadband pays the
money. It is Mr Chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his pretensio=
ns
indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest it=
ems
and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.
‘My friends,’ says Chadband, ̵=
6;eightpence
is not much; it might justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly h=
ave
been half a crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!’
With which remark, which appears from its soun=
d to
be an extract in verse, Mr Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a
chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.
‘My friends,’ says he, ‘what=
is
this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need
refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my
friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we a=
re
but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We
cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?’
Mr Snagsby, presuming on the success of his la=
st
point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, ‘No
wings.’ But is immediately frowned down by Mrs Snagsby.
‘I say, my friends,’ pursues Mr
Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr Snagsby's suggestion, ̵=
6;why
can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we wa=
lk,
my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without stren=
gth,
my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our
ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence,=
my
friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necess=
ary
to our limbs? Is it,’ says Chadband, glancing over the table, ‘=
from
bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is
yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from =
ham,
from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of
the good things which are set before us!’
The persecutors denied that there was any
particular gift in Mr Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon
another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of th=
eir
determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience =
that
the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.
Mr Chadband, however, having concluded for the
present, sits down at Mr Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. T=
he
conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mention=
ed
appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exempl=
ary
vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always be=
coming
a kind of considerable oil mills or other large factory for the production =
of
that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the long vacat=
ion,
in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business
that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.
At this period of the entertainment, Guster, w=
ho
has never recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or
impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt--a=
mong
which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing milita=
ry
music on Mr Chadband's head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentl=
eman
with muffins--at which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr Snag=
sby
that he is wanted.
‘And being wanted in the--not to put too
fine a point upon it--in the shop,’ says Mr Snagsby, rising, ‘p=
erhaps
this good company will excuse me for half a minute.’
Mr Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentic=
es
intently contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the ar=
m.
‘Why, bless my heart,’ says Mr
Snagsby, ‘what's the matter!’
‘This boy,’ says the constable, =
8216;although
he's repeatedly told to, won't move on--’
‘I'm always a-moving on, sar,’ cri=
es
the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. ‘I've always been
a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possibly move =
to,
sir, more nor I do move!’
‘He won't move on,’ says the const=
able
calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better
settlement in his stiff stock, ‘although he has been repeatedly
cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as
obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He
‘Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!’
cries the boy, clutching quite desperately at his hair and beating his bare
feet upon the floor of Mr Snagsby's passage.
‘Don't you come none of that or I shall =
make
blessed short work of you!’ says the constable, giving him a passionl=
ess
shake. ‘My instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you =
so
five hundred times.’
‘But where?’ cries the boy.
‘Well! Really, constable, you know,̵=
7;
says Mr Snagsby wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great
perplexity and doubt, ‘really, that does seem a question. Where, you
know?’
‘My instructions don't go to that,’
replies the constable. ‘My instructions are that this boy is to move =
on.’
Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any
one else that the great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some
few years in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one gra=
nd
recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical prescription--the be-all=
and
the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on! You are by no me=
ans
to move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at all agree about that. Move o=
n!
Mr Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says
nothing at all indeed, but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no
thoroughfare in any direction. By this time Mr and Mrs Chadband and Mrs
Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster hav=
ing
never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.
‘The simple question is, sir,’ says
the constable, ‘whether you know this boy. He says you do.’
Mrs Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cri=
es
out, ‘No he don't!’
‘My lit-tle woman!’ says Mr Snagsb=
y,
looking up the staircase. ‘My love, permit me! Pray have a moment's
patience, my dear. I do know something of this lad, and in what I know of h=
im,
I can't say that there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.̵=
7;
To whom the law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppress=
ing
the half-crown fact.
‘Well!’ says the constable, ‘=
;so
far, it seems, he had grounds for what he said. When I took him into custod=
y up
in Holborn, he said you knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the cro=
wd
said he was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, an=
d if
I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem inclin=
ed
to keep his word, but--Oh! Here IS the young man!’
Enter Mr Guppy, who nods to Mr Snagsby and tou=
ches
his hat with the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
‘I was strolling away from the office ju=
st
now when I found this row going on,’ says Mr Guppy to the law-station=
er, ‘and
as your name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be look=
ed
into.’
‘It was very good-natured of you, sir,=
8217;
says Mr Snagsby, ‘and I am obliged to you.’ And Mr Snagsby again
relates his experience, again suppressing the half-crown fact.
‘Now, I know where you live,’ says=
the
constable, then, to Jo. ‘You live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a n=
ice
innocent place to live in, ain't it?’
‘I can't go and live in no nicer place, =
sir,’
replies Jo. ‘They wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go t=
o a
nice innocent place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging =
to
such a reg'lar one as me!’
‘You are very poor, ain't you?’ sa=
ys
the constable.
‘Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in
gin'ral,’ replies Jo. ‘I leave you to judge now! I shook these =
two
half-crowns out of him,’ says the constable, producing them to the
company, ‘in only putting my hand upon him!’
‘They're wot's left, Mr Snagsby,’ =
says
Jo, ‘out of a sov-ring as wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she =
wos
a servant and as come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'e=
re
ouse and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the
berrin-ground wot he's berrid in. She ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at=
the
inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I ses. She ses to me she ses 'can you show =
me
all them places?' I ses 'yes I can' I ses. And she ses to me 'do it' and I =
dun
it and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. And I an't had much of the sov'=
ring
neither,’ says Jo, with dirty tears, ‘fur I had to pay five bob,
down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me change, and =
then
a young man he thieved another five while I was asleep and another boy he
thieved ninepence and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on=
it.’
‘You don't expect anybody to believe thi=
s,
about the lady and the sovereign, do you?’ says the constable, eyeing=
him
aside with ineffable disdain.
‘I don't know as I do, sir,’ repli=
es
Jo. ‘I don't expect nothink at all, sir, much, but that's the true
hist'ry on it.’
‘You see what he is!’ the constable
observes to the audience. ‘Well, Mr Snagsby, if I don't lock him up t=
his
time, will you engage for his moving on?’
‘No!’ cries Mrs Snagsby from the
stairs.
‘My little woman!’ pleads her husb=
and.
‘Constable, I have no doubt he'll move on. You know you really must do
it,’ says Mr Snagsby.
‘I'm everyways agreeable, sir,’ sa=
ys
the hapless Jo.
‘Do it, then,’ observes the consta=
ble.
‘You know what you have got to do. Do it! And recollect you won't get=
off
so easy next time. Catch hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mi=
le
off, the better for all parties.’
With this farewell hint and pointing generally=
to
the setting sun as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his
auditors good afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow m=
usic
for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat in =
his
hand for a little ventilation.
Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady=
and
the sovereign has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr
Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has been
suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, takes that inte=
rest
in the case that he enters on a regular cross- examination of the witness,
which is found so interesting by the ladies that Mrs Snagsby politely invit=
es
him to step upstairs and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarran=
ged
state of the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr Guppy
yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into the
drawing-room doorway, where Mr Guppy takes him in hand as a witness, patting
him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape like a butterman deali=
ng
with so much butter, and worrying him according to the best models. Nor is =
the
examination unlike many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciti=
ng
nothing and of its being lengthy, for Mr Guppy is sensible of his talent, a=
nd Mrs
Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition, but t=
hat
it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law. During the progr=
ess
of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil
trade, gets aground and waits to be floated off.
‘Well!’ says Mr Guppy. ‘Eith=
er
this boy sticks to it like cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the
common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and
Carboy's.’
Mrs Chadband whispers Mrs Snagsby, who exclaim=
s, ‘You
don't say so!’
‘For years!’ replied Mrs Chadband.=
‘Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for
years,’ Mrs Snagsby triumphantly explains to Mr Guppy. ‘Mrs
Chadband--this gentleman's wife--Reverend Mr Chadband.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ says Mr Guppy.
‘Before I married my present husband,=
217;
says Mrs Chadband.
‘Was you a party in anything, ma'am?R=
17;
says Mr Guppy, transferring his cross-examination.
‘No.’
‘NOT a party in anything, ma'am?’ =
says
Mr Guppy.
Mrs Chadband shakes her head.
‘Perhaps you were acquainted with somebo=
dy
who was a party in something, ma'am?’ says Mr Guppy, who likes nothing
better than to model his conversation on forensic principles.
‘Not exactly that, either,’ replie=
s Mrs
Chadband, humouring the joke with a hard-favoured smile.
‘Not exactly that, either!’ repeat=
s Mr
Guppy. ‘Very good. Pray, ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance wh=
o had
some transactions (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge=
and
Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take time, ma'=
am.
We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?’
‘Neither,’ says Mrs Chadband as
before.
‘Oh! A child!’ says Mr Guppy, thro=
wing
on the admiring Mrs Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thr=
own
on British jurymen. ‘Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to =
tell
us WHAT child.’
‘You have got it at last, sir,’ sa=
ys Mrs
Chadband with another hard-favoured smile. ‘Well, sir, it was before =
your
time, most likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a
child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and
Carboy.’
‘Miss Summerson, ma'am!’ cries Mr
Guppy, excited.
‘I call her Esther Summerson,’ say=
s Mrs
Chadband with austerity. ‘There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my tim=
e.
It was Esther. 'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do i=
t.’
‘My dear ma'am,’ returns Mr Guppy,
moving across the small apartment, ‘the humble individual who now
addresses you received that young lady in London when she first came here f=
rom
the establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure =
of
taking you by the hand.’
Mr Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, m=
akes
his accustomed signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his
pocket-handkerchief. Mrs Snagsby whispers ‘Hush!’
‘My friends,’ says Chadband, ̵=
6;we
have partaken in moderation’ (which was certainly not the case so far=
as
he was concerned) ‘of the comforts which have been provided for us. M=
ay
this house live upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful
therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it
proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of anything
else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of spiritual prof=
it?
Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, st=
and
forth!’
Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backwar=
d,
and another slouch forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts =
the
eloquent Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.
‘My young friend,’ says Chadband, =
‘you
are to us a pearl, you are to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to=
us
a jewel. And why, my young friend?’
‘I don't know,’ replies Jo. ‘=
;I
don't know nothink.’
‘My young friend,’ says Chadband, =
‘it
is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are
you, my young friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? =
No.
A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A hum=
an
boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young friend? Becau=
se
you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable=
of
profiting by this discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you =
are
not a stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.
‘O running stream of sparkling joy To be=
a
soaring human boy!
‘And do you cool yourself in that stream
now, my young friend? No. Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now?
Because you are in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of
obscurity, because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a s=
tate
of bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of love,
inquire.’
At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo,
who seems to have been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm
over his face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs Snagsby indignantly expresses =
her
belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.
‘My friends,’ says Mr Chadband with
his persecuted chin folding itself into its fat smile again as he looks rou=
nd, ‘it
is right that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is
right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I
stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three hours'
improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor has accepted=
a
composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!’
Great sensation on the part of Mrs Snagsby.
‘My friends,’ says Chadband, looki=
ng
round him in conclusion, ‘I will not proceed with my young friend now.
Will you come to- morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady wh=
ere
I am to be found to deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the
thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the
day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?’ (Th=
is
with a cow-like lightness.)
Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get =
away
on any terms, gives a shuffling nod. Mr Guppy then throws him a penny, and =
Mrs
Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But before he g=
oes
downstairs, Mr Snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table, whi=
ch
he carries away, hugging in his arms.
So, Mr Chadband--of whom the persecutors say t=
hat
it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abomin=
able
nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, havi=
ng
once the audacity to begin--retires into private life until he invests a li=
ttle
capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo moves on, through the long vacation,
down to Blackfriars Bridge, where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to
settle to his repast.
And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and
looking up at the great cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glitte=
ring
above a red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might
suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion of the
great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so far out of his reach. There=
he
sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him =
in
two streams--everything moving on to some purpose and to one end--until he =
is
stirred up and told to ‘move on’ too.
The long vacation saunters on towards term-time
like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea.=
Mr
Guppy saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his
penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into his desk=
in
every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will, but he must do
something, and it must be something of an unexciting nature, which will lay
neither his physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy
contribution. He finds that nothing agrees with him so well as to make litt=
le
gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape.
Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the arti=
cled
clerk has taken out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and Mr
Guppy's two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr Guppy and Mr Richard
Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr Carstone is for the time
being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr Guppy chafes. So exceedingly =
that
he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when=
he
sups with her off a lobster and lettuce in the Old Street Road, that he is
afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if he had known
there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted.
Mr Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the
occupation of a stool in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a ma=
tter
of course, sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wa=
nts
to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up
one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in=
the
most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot when there is no
plot, and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary.
It is a source of much gratification to Mr Gup=
py,
therefore, to find the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarnd=
yce
and Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can =
come
of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through =
the
long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office, to wit, Young Smallweed.
Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called
Small and eke Chick Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was =
ever
a boy is much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen a=
nd
an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a passion=
for
a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane and for her sa=
ke
to have broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged
some years. He is a town-made article, of small stature and weazen features,
but may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall
hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that
gentleman (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds
himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr Guppy's particular confiden=
ce
and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on
difficult points in private life.
Mr Guppy has been lolling out of window all the
morning after trying all the stools in succession and finding none of them
easy, and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a no=
tion
of cooling it. Mr Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent drin=
ks,
and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and stirred them up w=
ith
the ruler. Mr Guppy propounds for Mr Smallweed's consideration the paradox =
that
the more you drink the thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the win=
dow-
sill in a state of hopeless languor.
While thus looking out into the shade of Old
Square, Lincoln's Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr Gupp=
y becomes
conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below and
turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whi=
stle
is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries, ‘Hip! Gup-py!=
’
‘Why, you don't mean it!’ says Mr
Guppy, aroused. ‘Small! Here's Jobling!’ Small's head looks out=
of
window too and nods to Jobling.
‘Where have you sprung up from?’
inquires Mr Guppy.
‘From the market-gardens down by Deptfor=
d. I
can't stand it any longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half a
crown. Upon my soul, I'm hungry.’
Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearan=
ce
of having run to seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.
‘I say! Just throw out half a crown if y=
ou
have got one to spare. I want to get some dinner.’
‘Will you come and dine with me?’ =
says
Mr Guppy, throwing out the coin, which Mr Jobling catches neatly.
‘How long should I have to hold out?R=
17;
says Jobling.
‘Not half an hour. I am only waiting here
till the enemy goes,’ returns Mr Guppy, butting inward with his head.=
‘What enemy?’
‘A new one. Going to be articled. Will y=
ou
wait?’
‘Can you give a fellow anything to read =
in
the meantime?’ says Mr Jobling.
Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr Jobling
declares with much earnestness that he ‘can't stand it.’
‘You shall have the paper,’ says Mr
Guppy. ‘He shall bring it down. But you had better not be seen about
here. Sit on our staircase and read. It's a quiet place.’
Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The
sagacious Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops =
his
eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted
with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy retreats, =
and
then Smallweed fetches Mr Jobling up.
‘Well, and how are you?’ says Mr
Guppy, shaking hands with him.
‘So, so. How are you?’
Mr Guppy replying that he is not much to boast=
of,
Mr Jobling ventures on the question, ‘How is SHE?’ This Mr Guppy
resents as a liberty, retorting, ‘Jobling, there
‘Any subject but that!’ says Mr Gu=
ppy
with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury. ‘For there
Mr Jobling begs pardon again.
During this short colloquy, the active Smallwe=
ed,
who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of pa=
per,
‘Return immediately.’ This notification to all whom it may conc=
ern,
he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the angle=
of
inclination at which Mr Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may n=
ow
make themselves scarce.
Accordingly they betake themselves to a
neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the
denomination slap- bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of for=
ty,
is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of w=
hom
it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are nothing.=
He
stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If he ever lay=
in
a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an =
old,
old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his
neck is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows a=
ll
about it, whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nurse=
d by
Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account for whose
terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices that his father =
was
John Doe and his mother the only female member of the Roe family, also that=
his
first long-clothes were made from a blue bag.
Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seduc=
tive
show in the window of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verda=
nt
baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, =
Mr
Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has his
favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs,=
who
keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with
anything less than a full-sized ‘bread’ or proposing to him any
joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is
adamant.
Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to=
his
dread experience, Mr Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet,
turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue=
of
viands and saying ‘What do YOU take, Chick?’ Chick, out of the
profundity of his artfulness, preferring ‘veal and ham and French
beans--and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly’ (with an unearthly c=
ock
of his venerable eye), Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling give the like order. Three p=
int
pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns bearing =
what
is apparently a model of the Tower of Babel but what is really a pile of pl=
ates
and flat tin dish-covers. Mr Smallweed, approving of what is set before him,
conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,
amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a clatter =
of
crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice c=
uts
from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the
speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that have be=
en
disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, an=
d a
considerably heated atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths s=
eem
to break out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, t=
he
legal triumvirate appease their appetites.
Mr Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere
adornment might require. His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance=
of
a glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same
phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at the se=
ams.
He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; ev=
en
his light whiskers droop with something of a shabby air.
His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests s=
pare
living for some little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of
veal and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in
theirs, that Mr Guppy proposes another. ‘Thank you, Guppy,’ say=
s Mr
Jobling, ‘I really don't know but what I WILL take another.’
Another being brought, he falls to with great
goodwill.
Mr Guppy takes silent notice of him at interva=
ls
until he is half way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying
pull at his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his =
legs
and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment, Mr Guppy sa=
ys, ‘You
are a man again, Tony!’
‘Well, not quite yet,’ says Mr
Jobling. ‘Say, just born.’
‘Will you take any other vegetables? Gra=
ss?
Peas? Summer cabbage?’
‘Thank you, Guppy,’ says Mr Joblin=
g. ‘I
really don't know but what I WILL take summer cabbage.’
Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from=
Mr
Smallweed) of ‘Without slugs, Polly!’ And cabbage produced.
‘I am growing up, Guppy,’ says Mr
Jobling, plying his knife and fork with a relishing steadiness.
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘In fact, I have just turned into my tee=
ns,’
says Mr Jobling.
He says no more until he has performed his tas=
k,
which he achieves as Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting
over the ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily b=
y a
veal and ham and a cabbage.
‘Now, Small,’ says Mr Guppy, ̵=
6;what
would you recommend about pastry?’
‘Marrow puddings,’ says Mr Smallwe=
ed
instantly.
‘Aye, aye!’ cries Mr Jobling with =
an
arch look. ‘You're there, are you? Thank you, Mr Guppy, I don't know =
but
what I WILL take a marrow pudding.’
Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr Jobli=
ng
adds in a pleasant humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, =
by
command of Mr Smallweed, ‘three Cheshires,’ and to those ‘=
;three
small rums.’ This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr Jobli=
ng
puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to
himself), leans against the wall, and says, ‘I am grown up now, Guppy=
. I
have arrived at maturity.’
‘What do you think, now,’ says Mr =
Guppy,
‘about--you don't mind Smallweed?’
‘Not the least in the worid. I have the
pleasure of drinking his good health.’
‘Sir, to you!’ says Mr Smallweed.<= o:p>
‘I was saying, what do you think NOW,=
217;
pursues Mr Guppy, ‘of enlisting?’
‘Why, what I may think after dinner,R=
17;
returns Mr Jobling, ‘is one thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think
before dinner is another thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the
question, What am I to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,’
says Mr Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture i=
n an
English stable. ‘Ill fo manger. That's the French saying, and mangeri=
ng
is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.’
Mr Smallweed is decidedly of opinion ‘mu=
ch
more so.’
‘If any man had told me,’ pursues
Jobling, ‘even so lately as when you and I had the frisk down in
Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over to see that house at Castle Wold--̵=
7;
Mr Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold.
‘Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable fr=
iend
for that cheer.) If any man had told me then that I should be as hard up at=
the
present time as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have
pitched into him,’ says Mr Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water wit=
h an
air of desperate resignation; ‘I should have let fly at his head.R=
17;
‘Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side=
of
the post then,’ remonstrates Mr Guppy. ‘You were talking about
nothing else in the gig.’
‘Guppy,’ says Mr Jobling, ‘I
will not deny it. I was on the wrong side of the post. But I trusted to thi=
ngs
coming round.’
That very popular trust in flat things coming
round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their ̵=
6;coming’
round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world's ‘coming’
triangular!
‘I had confident expectations that things
would come round and be all square,’ says Mr Jobling with some vaguen=
ess
of expression and perhaps of meaning too. ‘But I was disappointed. Th=
ey
never did. And when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to
people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of
borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any new
professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference to-morrow, it
would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what's a fellow to do? I have =
been
keeping out of the way and living cheap down about the market-gardens, but
what's the use of living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well
live dear.’
‘Better,’ Mr Smallweed thinks.
‘Certainly. It's the fashionable way; an=
d fashion
and whiskers have been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it,’
says Mr Jobling. ‘They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are gre=
at.
Well,’ proceeds Mr Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and- wate=
r, ‘what
can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?’
Mr Guppy comes more fully into the conversatio=
n to
state what, in his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely
impressive manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise =
than
as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
‘Jobling,’ says Mr Guppy, ‘m=
yself
and our mutual friend Smallweed--’
Mr Smallweed modestly observes, ‘Gentlem=
en
both!’ and drinks.
‘--Have had a little conversation on this
matter more than once since you--’
‘Say, got the sack!’ cries Mr Jobl=
ing
bitterly. ‘Say it, Guppy. You mean it.’
‘No-o-o! Left the Inn,’ Mr Smallwe=
ed
delicately suggests.
‘Since you left the Inn, Jobling,’
says Mr Guppy; ‘and I have mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a
plan I have lately thought of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?=
217;
‘I know there is such a stationer,’
returns Mr Jobling. ‘He was not ours, and I am not acquainted with hi=
m.’
‘He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted
with him,’ Mr Guppy retorts. ‘Well, sir! I have lately become
better acquainted with him through some accidental circumstances that have =
made
me a visitor of his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessar=
y to
offer in argument. They may--or they may not--have some reference to a subj=
ect
which may--or may not--have cast its shadow on my existence.’
As it is Mr Guppy's perplexing way with boastf=
ul
misery to tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment th=
ey
touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in =
the
human mind, both Mr Jobling and Mr Smallweed decline the pitfall by remaini=
ng
silent.
‘Such things may be,’ repeats Mr
Guppy, ‘or they may not be. They are no part of the case. It is enoug=
h to
mention that both Mr and Mrs Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that
Snagsby has, in busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has=
all
Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our mutual
friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?’
Mr Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be swo=
rn.
‘Now, gentlemen of the jury,’ says=
Mr
Guppy, ‘--I mean, now, Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect o=
f a
living. Granted. But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. =
You
want time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You might
live through it on much worse terms than by writing for Snagsby.’
Mr Jobling is about to interrupt when the
sagacious Smallweed checks him with a dry cough and the words, ‘Hem!
Shakspeare!’
‘There are two branches to this subject,
Jobling,’ says Mr Guppy. ‘That is the first. I come to the seco=
nd.
You know Krook, the Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,’ says=
Mr
Guppy in his encouraging cross-examination-tone, ‘I think you know Kr=
ook,
the Chancellor, across the lane?’
‘I know him by sight,’ says Mr
Jobling.
‘You know him by sight. Very well. And y=
ou
know little Flite?’
‘Everybody knows her,’ says Mr
Jobling.
‘Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it =
has
been one of my duties of late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance,
deducting from it the amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in
consequence of instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in=
her
presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into a
knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let. You may
live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as quietly as if y=
ou
were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no questions and would accept you as a
tenant at a word from me-- before the clock strikes, if you chose. And I te=
ll
you another thing, Jobling,’ says Mr Guppy, who has suddenly lowered =
his
voice and become familiar again, ‘he's an extraordinary old chap--alw=
ays
rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to
read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most
extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but what it might be worth a fell=
ow's
while to look him up a bit.’
‘You don't mean--’ Mr Jobling begi=
ns.
‘I mean,’ returns Mr Guppy, shrugg=
ing
his shoulders with becoming modesty, ‘that I can't make him out. I ap=
peal
to our mutual friend Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark th=
at I
can't make him out.’
Mr Smallweed bears the concise testimony, R=
16;A
few!’
‘I have seen something of the profession=
and
something of life, Tony,’ says Mr Guppy, ‘and it's seldom I can=
't
make a man out, more or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly,
and secret (though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came across. =
Now,
he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, and he =
is
reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver,=
or
an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender--all of which I have thought li=
kely
at different times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him=
. I
don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when everything else suits.’=
;
Mr Jobling, Mr Guppy, and Mr Smallweed all lean
their elbows on the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the
ceiling. After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in
their pockets, and look at one another.
‘If I had the energy I once possessed, T=
ony!’
says Mr Guppy with a sigh. ‘But there are chords in the human mind--&=
#8217;
Expressing the remainder of the desolate senti=
ment
in rum-and- water, Mr Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony
Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things are sla=
ck,
his purse, ‘as far as three or four or even five pound goes,’ w=
ill
be at his disposal. ‘For never shall it be said,’ Mr Guppy adds
with emphasis, ‘that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!=
8217;
The latter part of the proposal is so directly=
to
the purpose that Mr Jobling says with emotion, ‘Guppy, my trump, your
fist!’ Mr Guppy presents it, saying, ‘Jobling, my boy, there it=
is!’
Mr Jobling returns, ‘Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!R=
17; Mr
Guppy replies, ‘Jobling, we have.’
They then shake hands, and Mr Jobling adds in a
feeling manner, ‘Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take
another glass for old acquaintance sake.’
‘Krook's last lodger died there,’
observes Mr Guppy in an incidental way.
‘Did he though!’ says Mr Jobling.<= o:p>
‘There was a verdict. Accidental death. =
You
don't mind that?’
‘No,’ says Mr Jobling, ‘I do=
n't
mind it; but he might as well have died somewhere else. It's devilish odd t=
hat
he need go and die at MY place!’ Mr Jobling quite resents this libert=
y,
several times returning to it with such remarks as, ‘There are places
enough to die in, I should think!’ or, ‘He wouldn't have liked =
my
dying at HIS place, I dare say!’
However, the compact being virtually made, Mr
Guppy proposes to dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr Krook is=
at
home, as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr
Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and conveys it=
out
of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon returns with the intellige=
nce
that Mr Krook is at home and that he has seen him through the shop-door,
sitting in the back premises, sleeping ‘like one o'clock.’
‘Then I'll pay,’ says Mr Guppy, =
8216;and
we'll go and see him. Small, what will it be?’
Mr Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the
waitress with one hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: ̵=
6;Four
veals and hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six breads=
is
five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four half-pints of
half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is eight and three, and=
three
Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in half a sovereign, Polly, and
eighteenpence out!’
Not at all excited by these stupendous
calculations, Smallweed dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains
behind to take a little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve,=
and
to read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to himself,
shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his eye over the
columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to have disappeared und=
er
the bedclothes.
Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling repair to the rag and
bottle shop, where they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is=
to
say, breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite insensi=
ble
to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the table beside him,
among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin- bottle and a glass. The unwhole=
some
air is so stained with this liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon=
her
shelf, as they open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
‘Hold up here!’ says Mr Guppy, giv=
ing
the relaxed figure of the old man another shake. ‘Mr Krook! Halloa, s=
ir!’
But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of =
old
clothes with a spirituous heat smouldering in it. ‘Did you ever see s=
uch
a stupor as he falls into, between drink and sleep?’ says Mr Guppy.
‘If this is his regular sleep,’
returns Jobling, rather alarmed, ‘it'll last a long time one of these
days, I am thinking.’
‘It's always more like a fit than a nap,=
’
says Mr Guppy, shaking him again. ‘Halloa, your lordship! Why, he mig=
ht
be robbed fifty times over! Open your eyes!’
After much ado, he opens them, but without
appearing to see his visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one l=
eg
on another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his par=
ched
lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.
‘He is alive, at any rate,’ says Mr
Guppy. ‘How are you, my Lord Chancellor. I have brought a friend of m=
ine,
sir, on a little matter of business.’
The old man still sits, often smacking his dry
lips without the least consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attemp=
t to
rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them=
.
‘How do you do, Mr Krook?’ says Mr
Guppy in some discomfiture. ‘How do you do, sir? You are looking
charming, Mr Krook. I hope you are pretty well?’
The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr
Guppy, or at nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face
against the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it, =
and
then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the movement in the
court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these things recovers him. =
He
comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking
keenly at them.
‘Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozi=
ng.
Hi! I am hard to wake, odd times.’
‘Rather so, indeed, sir,’ responds=
Mr
Guppy.
‘What? You've been a-trying to do it, ha=
ve
you?’ says the suspicious Krook.
‘Only a little,’ Mr Guppy explains=
.
The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle,=
he
takes it up, examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.
‘I say!’ he cries like the hobgobl=
in
in the story. ‘Somebody's been making free here!’
‘I assure you we found it so,’ say=
s Mr
Guppy. ‘Would you allow me to get it filled for you?’
‘Yes, certainly I would!’ cries Kr=
ook
in high glee. ‘Certainly I would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next
door--Sol's Arms--the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know=
ME!’
He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr Guppy t=
hat
that gentleman, with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out=
and
hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in his arms
like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.
‘But, I say,’ he whispers, with his
eyes screwed up, after tasting it, ‘this ain't the Lord Chancellor's
fourteenpenny. This is eighteenpenny!’
‘I thought you might like that better,=
8217;
says Mr Guppy.
‘You're a nobleman, sir,’ returns
Krook with another taste, and his hot breath seems to come towards them lik=
e a
flame. ‘You're a baron of the land.’
Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr
Guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr Weevle and states =
the
object of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets
beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time to su=
rvey
his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. ‘You'd like to see t=
he
room, young man?’ he says. ‘Ah! It's a good room! Been whitewas=
hed.
Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's worth twice the rent,
letting alone my company when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice a=
way.’
Commending the room after this manner, the old=
man
takes them upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be
and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up from=
his
inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded-- for the Lord Chancel=
lor
cannot be hard on Mr Guppy, associated as he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarn=
dyce
and Jarndyce, and other famous claims on his professional consideration--an=
d it
is agreed that Mr Weevle shall take possession on the morrow. Mr Weevle and=
Mr
Guppy then repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal
introduction of the former to Mr Snagsby is effected and (more important) t=
he
vote and interest of Mrs Snagsby are secured. They then report progress to =
the
eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, =
and
separate, Mr Guppy explaining that he would terminate his little entertainm=
ent
by standing treat at the play but that there are chords in the human mind w=
hich
would render it a hollow mockery.
On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr Weev=
le
modestly appears at Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and estab=
lishes
himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him=
in
his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day Mr Weevle, =
who
is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and thre=
ad
of Miss Flite and a hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apolog=
ies
for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up =
his
two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks,
like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.
But what Mr Weevle prizes most of all his few
possessions (next after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment =
that
only whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities of
Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies of title a=
nd
fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined with capital, is capab=
le
of producing. With these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a
band-box during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his
apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety =
of
fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every varie=
ty
of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every variety =
of
flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.
But fashion is Mr Weevle's, as it was Tony
Jobling's, weakness. To borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an
evening and read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are
shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable
consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and distinguished
circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished feat of joining it
yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant and distinguished feat of
leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Gal=
axy
Gallery of British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy
marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is =
to
become acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr Weevle
reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated, and seem=
s to
know the originals, and to be known of them.
For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of han=
dy
shifts and devices as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself =
as
well as to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of
evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not visited by=
Mr
Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in a dark hat, he comes =
out
of his dull room--where he has inherited the deal wilderness of desk
bespattered with a rain of ink--and talks to Krook or is ‘very free,&=
#8217;
as they call it in the court, commendingly, with any one disposed for
conversation. Wherefore, Mrs Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to off=
er
two remarks to Mrs Perkins: firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whisker=
s,
she could wish 'em to be identically like that young man's; and secondly, &=
#8216;Mark
my words, Mrs Perkins, ma'am, and don't you be surprised, Lord bless you, if
that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!’
In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neig=
hbourhood,
though one of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as Bart,
passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and its
contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street, always
solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb, but
where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree whose flavour is ab=
out
as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of youth.
There has been only one child in the Smallweed
family for several generations. Little old men and women there have been, b=
ut
no child, until Mr Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her
intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With such
infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding, and
interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into =
it, Mr
Smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family.
Mr Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the
party. He is in a helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to h=
is
upper, limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,
the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of the ha=
rdest
facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenologi=
cal
attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr
Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and =
is a
grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the
neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-get=
ting
species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired into holes
until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's god was Compound
Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it. Meeting with a heavy los=
s in
an honest little enterprise in which all the loss was intended to have been=
on
the other side, he broke something--something necessary to his existence,
therefore it couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. As
his character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a
complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient people =
the
Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an example of the failur=
e of
education.
His spirit shone through his son, to whom he h=
ad
always preached of ‘going out’ early in life and whom he made a
clerk in a sharp scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young
gentleman improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the discounting
profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as his father had do=
ne
before him, he too begat a lean and anxious- minded son, who in his turn, g=
oing
out early in life and marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and
Judith Smallweed, twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth =
of
this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to
marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all
amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy- tales, fictions, and
fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact tha=
t it
has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom=
it
has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with
something depressing on their minds.
At the present time, in the dark little parlour
certain feet below the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, =
only
ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest of
sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no bad
allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's mind-- seated in two
black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side of the fire-place, the
superannuated Mr and Mrs Smallweed while away the rosy hours. On the stove =
are
a couple of trivets for the pots and kettles which it is Grandfather
Smallweed's usual occupation to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece
between them is a sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also
superintends when it is in action. Under the venerable Mr Smallweed's seat =
and
guarded by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with which he =
is
always provided in order that he may have something to throw at the venerab=
le
partner of his respected age whenever she makes an allusion to money--a sub=
ject
on which he is particularly sensitive.
‘And where's Bart?’ Grandfather
Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's twin sister.
‘He an't come in yet,’ says Judy.<= o:p>
‘It's his tea-time, isn't it?’
‘No.’
‘How much do you mean to say it wants th=
en?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘Hey?’
‘Ten minutes.’ (Loud on the part of Judy.)
‘Ho!’ says Grandfather Smallweed. =
‘Ten
minutes.’
Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling a=
nd
shaking her head at the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them w=
ith
money and screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, ‘=
Ten
ten-pound notes!’
Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the
cushion at her.
‘Drat you, be quiet!’ says the good
old man.
The effect of this act of jaculation is twofol=
d.
It not only doubles up Mrs Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's
chair and causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a hi=
ghly
unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr Smallweed
himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter's chair like a broken puppet. =
The
excellent old gentleman being at these times a mere clothes-bag with a black
skull-cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance unt=
il
he has undergone the two operations at the hands of his granddaughter of be=
ing
shaken up like a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. S=
ome
indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and the shar=
er
of his life's evening again fronting one another in their two porter's chai=
rs,
like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on their post by the Black Serjea=
nt,
Death.
Judy the twin is worthy company for these
associates. She is so indubitably sister to Mr Smallweed the younger that t=
he
two kneaded into one would hardly make a young person of average proportion=
s,
while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness to the
monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might walk about t=
he
table-land on the top of a barrel- organ without exciting much remark as an
unusual specimen. Under existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a
plain, spare gown of brown stuff.
Judy never owned a doll, never heard of
Cinderella, never played at any game. She once or twice fell into children's
company when she was about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on =
with
Judy, and Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an animal of anot=
her
species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is very
doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen the thing =
done
that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of anything like a youthful
laugh, she certainly can have no conception. If she were to try one, she wo=
uld
find her teeth in her way, modelling that action of her face, as she has
unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid =
age.
Such is Judy.
And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for
his life. He knows no more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor
than he knows of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap- fr=
og
or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much=
the
better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an opening has
dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of Mr Guppy. Hence h=
is
admiration and his emulation of that shining enchanter.
Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets=
one
of the sheet- iron tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The
bread she puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in=
a
small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as it is
served out and asks Judy where the girl is.
‘Charley, do you mean?’ says Judy.=
‘Hey?’ from Grandfather Smallweed.=
‘Charley, do you mean?’
This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed,
who, chuckling as usual at the trivets, cries, ‘Over the water! Charl=
ey
over the water, Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley =
over
the water, over the water to Charley!’ and becomes quite energetic ab=
out
it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently recovered his
late exertion.
‘Ha!’ he says when there is silenc=
e. ‘If
that's her name. She eats a deal. It would be better to allow her for her k=
eep.’
Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head=
and
purses up her mouth into no without saying it.
‘No?’ returns the old man. ‘=
Why
not?’
‘She'd want sixpence a day, and we can d=
o it
for less,’ says Judy.
‘Sure?’
Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and
calls, as she scrapes the butter on the loaf with every precaution against
waste and cuts it into slices, ‘You, Charley, where are you?’
Timidly obedient to the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large
bonnet, with her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in=
one
of them, appears, and curtsys.
‘What work are you about now?’ says
Judy, making an ancient snap at her like a very sharp old beldame.
‘I'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room,
miss,’ replies Charley.
‘Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't lo=
iter.
Shirking won't do for me. Make haste! Go along!’ cries Judy with a st=
amp
upon the ground. ‘You girls are more trouble than you're worth, by ha=
lf.’
On this severe matron, as she returns to her t=
ask
of scraping the butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her broth=
er,
looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens the
street-door.
‘Aye, aye, Bart!’ says Grandfather
Smallweed. ‘Here you are, hey?’
‘Here I am,’ says Bart.
‘Been along with your friend again, Bart=
?’
Small nods.
‘Dining at his expense, Bart?’
Small nods again.
‘That's right. Live at his expense as mu=
ch
as you can, and take warning by his foolish example. That's the use of such=
a
friend. The only use you can put him to,’ says the venerable sage.
His grandson, without receiving this good coun=
sel
as dutifully as he might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in=
a
slight wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces
then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs Smallweed
perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the trivets and Mr Smallwe=
ed
requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught.
‘Yes, yes,’ says the good old
gentleman, reverting to his lesson of wisdom. ‘That's such advice as =
your
father would have given you, Bart. You never saw your father. More's the pi=
ty.
He was my true son.’ Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was
particularly pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.
‘He was my true son,’ repeats the =
old
gentleman, folding his bread and butter on his knee, ‘a good accounta=
nt,
and died fifteen years ago.’
Mrs Smallweed, following her usual instinct,
breaks out with ‘Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a bl=
ack
box, fifteen hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hi=
d!’
Her worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately dischar=
ges
the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her chair, and falls ba=
ck
in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after visiting Mrs Smallweed with =
one
of these admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessi=
ng,
firstly because the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one =
eye
and gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters viol=
ent
imprecations against Mrs Smallweed, and thirdly because the contrast between
those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is suggestive of a bale=
ful
old malignant who would be very wicked if he could. All this, however, is so
common in the Smallweed family circle that it produces no impression. The o=
ld
gentleman is merely shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cus=
hion
is restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps with h=
er
cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again, ready to be bo=
wled
down like a ninepin.
Some time elapses in the present instance befo=
re
the old gentleman is sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even th=
en
he mixes it up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious
partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth but the
trivets. As thus: ‘If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he might h=
ave
been worth a deal of money--you brimstone chatterer!--but just as he was
beginning to build up the house that he had been making the foundations for,
through many a year--you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do
you mean!--he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a
spare man, full of business care--I should like to throw a cat at you inste=
ad
of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of
yourself!--and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just
dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born--you are an old p=
ig.
You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!’
Judy, not interested in what she has often hea=
rd,
begins to collect in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bot=
toms
of cups and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little
charwoman's evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the iron
bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of loaves as the
rigid economy of the house has left in existence.
‘But your father and me were partners, B=
art,’
says the old gentleman, ‘and when I am gone, you and Judy will have a=
ll
there is. It's rare for you both that you went out early in life--Judy to t=
he
flower business, and you to the law. You won't want to spend it. You'll get
your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will go ba=
ck
to the flower business and you'll still stick to the law.’
One might infer from Judy's appearance that her
business rather lay with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her ti=
me
been apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A close
observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her brother's, when their
venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone, some little impatience to k=
now
when he may be going, and some resentful opinion that it is time he went.
‘Now, if everybody has done,’ says Judy, completing her preparations, ‘I'll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she took it by herself in the kitchen.’<= o:p>
Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a
heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and
butter. In the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed
appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the remotest
periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or
without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful, evincing an accomplishment in
the art of girl-driving seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.
‘Now, don't stare about you all the
afternoon,’ cries Judy, shaking her head and stamping her foot as she
happens to catch the glance which has been previously sounding the basin of
tea, ‘but take your victuals and get back to your work.’
‘Yes, miss,’ says Charley.
‘Don't say yes,’ returns Miss
Smallweed, ‘for I know what you girls are. Do it without saying it, a=
nd
then I may begin to believe you.’
Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token =
of
submission and so disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges=
her
not to gormandize, which ‘in you girls,’ she observes, is
disgusting. Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on=
the
general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.
‘See who it is, and don't chew when you =
open
it!’ cries Judy.
The object of her attentions withdrawing for t=
he
purpose, Miss Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of=
the
bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups into the
ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers the eating and
drinking terminated.
‘Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?̵=
7; says
the snappish Judy.
It is one Mr George, it appears. Without other
announcement or ceremony, Mr George walks in.
‘Whew!’ says Mr George. ‘You=
are
hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well! Perhaps you do right to get used to one.=
’
Mr George makes the latter remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather
Smallweed.
‘Ho! It's you!’ cries the old
gentleman. ‘How de do? How =
de
do?’
‘Middling,’ replies Mr George, tak=
ing
a chair. ‘Your granddaughter I have had the honour of seeing before; =
my
service to you, miss.’
‘This is my grandson,’ says
Grandfather Smallweed. ‘You ha'n't seen him before. He is in the law =
and
not much at home.’
‘My service to him, too! He is like his
sister. He is very like his sister. He is devilish like his sister,’ =
says
Mr George, laying a great and not altogether complimentary stress on his la=
st
adjective.
‘And how does the world use you, Mr Geor=
ge?’
Grandfather Smallweed inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.
‘Pretty much as usual. Like a football.&=
#8217;
He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made,=
and
good looking, with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sin=
ewy
and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a
pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits forward on his
chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space for some dress or
accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside. His step too is measured a=
nd
heavy and would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is
close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for yea=
rs
familiar with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the =
open
palm of his broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one
might guess Mr George to have been a trooper once upon a time.
A special contrast Mr George makes to the
Smallweed family. Trooper was never yet billeted upon a household more unli=
ke
him. It is a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their
stunted forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little
narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones, are in=
the
strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the middle of the grim
parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his
elbows squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would abs=
orb
into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed house, extra little
back-kitchen and all.
‘Do you rub your legs to rub life into '=
em?’
he asks of Grandfather Smallweed after looking round the room.
‘Why, it's partly a habit, Mr George,
and--yes--it partly helps the circulation,’ he replies.
‘The cir-cu-la-tion!’ repeats Mr
George, folding his arms upon his chest and seeming to become two sizes lar=
ger.
‘Not much of that, I should think.’
‘Truly I'm old, Mr George,’ says
Grandfather Smallweed. ‘But I can carry my years. I'm older than HER,=
’
nodding at his wife, ‘and see what she is? You're a brimstone chatter=
er!’
with a sudden revival of his late hostility.
‘Unlucky old soul!’ says Mr George,
turning his head in that direction. ‘Don't scold the old lady. Look at
her here, with her poor cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a
muddle. Hold up, ma'am. That's better. There we are! Think of your mother, =
Mr
Smallweed,’ says Mr George, coming back to his seat from assisting he=
r, ‘if
your wife an't enough.’
‘I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr
George?’ the old man hints with a leer.
The colour of Mr George's face rather deepens =
as
he replies, ‘Why no. I wasn't.’
‘I am astonished at it.’
‘So am I. I ought to have been a good so=
n,
and I think I meant to have been one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad =
son,
that's the long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.R=
17;
‘Surprising!’ cries the old man.
‘However,’ Mr George resumes, R=
16;the
less said about it, the better now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a =
pipe
out of the two months' interest! (Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be af=
raid
to order the pipe. Here's the new bill, and here's the two months'
interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it together in=
my
business.)’
Mr George sits, with his arms folded, consuming
the family and the parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy =
to
two black leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures=
the
document he has just received, and from the other takes another similar
document which he hands to Mr George, who twists it up for a pipelight. As =
the
old man inspects, through his glasses, every up-stroke and down-stroke of b=
oth
documents before he releases them from their leathern prison, and as he cou=
nts
the money three times over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at
least twice, and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possi=
ble
to be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite concluded,
and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and fingers from it and ans=
wers
Mr George's last remark by saying, ‘Afraid to order the pipe? We are =
not
so mercenary as that, sir. Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of =
cold
brandy-and-water for Mr George.’
The sportive twins, who have been looking stra=
ight
before them all this time except when they have been engrossed by the black
leathern cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but
leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller to the
parental bear.
‘And there you sit, I suppose, all the d=
ay
long, eh?’ says Mr George with folded arms.
‘Just so, just so,’ the old man no=
ds.
‘And don't you occupy yourself at all?=
8217;
‘I watch the fire--and the boiling and t=
he
roasting--’
‘When there is any,’ says Mr George
with great expression.
‘Just so. When there is any.’
‘Don't you read or get read to?’
The old man shakes his head with sharp sly
triumph. ‘No, no. We have never been readers in our family. It don't =
pay.
Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!’
‘There's not much to choose between your=
two
states,’ says the visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hea=
ring
as he looks from him to the old woman and back again. ‘I say!’ =
in a
louder voice.
‘I hear you.’
‘You'll sell me up at last, I suppose, w=
hen
I am a day in arrear.’
‘My dear friend!’ cries Grandfather
Smallweed, stretching out both hands to embrace him. ‘Never! Never, my
dear friend! But my friend in the city that I got to lend you the money--HE
might!’
‘Oh! You can't answer for him?’ sa=
ys Mr
George, finishing the inquiry in his lower key with the words ‘You ly=
ing
old rascal!’
‘My dear friend, he is not to be depended
on. I wouldn't trust him. He will have his bond, my dear friend.’
‘Devil doubt him,’ says Mr George.
Charley appearing with a tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of toba=
cco,
and the brandy- and-water, he asks her, ‘How do you come here! You
haven't got the family face.’
‘I goes out to work, sir,’ returns
Charley.
The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) ta=
kes
her bonnet off, with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the
head. ‘You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of
youth as much as it wants fresh air.’ Then he dismisses her, lights h=
is
pipe, and drinks to Mr Smallweed's friend in the city-- the one solitary fl=
ight
of that esteemed old gentleman's imagination.
‘So you think he might be hard upon me, =
eh?’
‘I think he might--I am afraid he would.=
I
have known him do it,’ says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, ̵=
6;twenty
times.’
Incautiously, because his stricken better-half,
who has been dozing over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and
jabbers ‘Twenty thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a
money-box, twenty guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty--’ =
and
is then cut short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this
singular experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it
crushes her in the usual manner.
‘You're a brimstone idiot. You're a
scorpion--a brimstone scorpion! You're a sweltering toad. You're a chatteri=
ng
clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!’ gasps the old ma=
n,
prostrate in his chair. ‘My dear friend, will you shake me up a littl=
e?’
Mr George, who has been looking first at one of
them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable
acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upri=
ght
in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether o=
r no
to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his
grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make=
his
head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly down in his chair again a=
nd
adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub that the old man winks with both eyes=
for
a minute afterwards.
‘O Lord!’ gasps Mr Smallweed. R=
16;That'll
do. Thank you, my dear friend, that'll do. Oh, dear me, I'm out of breath. O
Lord!’ And Mr Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of =
his
dear friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.
The alarming presence, however, gradually subs=
ides
into its chair and falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the
philosophical reflection, ‘The name of your friend in the city begins
with a D, comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond.’
‘Did you speak, Mr George?’ inquir=
es
the old man.
The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forwa=
rd
with his right elbow on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand,
while his other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a
martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr Smallweed with
grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of smoke away in order that=
he
may see him the more clearly.
‘I take it,’ he says, making just =
as
much and as little change in his position as will enable him to reach the g=
lass
to his lips with a round, full action, ‘that I am the only man alive =
(or
dead either) that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?’
‘Well,’ returns the old man, ̵=
6;it's
true that I don't see company, Mr George, and that I don't treat. I can't
afford to it. But as you, in your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition-=
-’
‘Why, it's not for the value of it; that=
's
no great thing. It was a fancy to get it out of you. To have something in f=
or
my money.’
‘Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!’
cries Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs.
‘Very. I always was.’ Puff. ‘= ;It's a sure sign of my prudence that I ever found the way here.’ Puff. = 216;Also, that I am what I am.’ Puff. ‘I am well known to be prudent,R= 17; says Mr George, composedly smoking. ‘I rose in life that way.’<= o:p>
‘Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise
yet.’
Mr George laughs and drinks.
‘Ha'n't you no relations, now,’ as=
ks
Grandfather Smallweed with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘who would pay off =
this
little principal or who would lend you a good name or two that I could pers=
uade
my friend in the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names wo=
uld
be sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha'n't you no such relations, Mr
George?’
Mr George, still composedly smoking, replies, =
‘If
I had, I shouldn't trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belonging=
s in
my day. It
‘But natural affection, Mr George,’
hints Grandfather Smallweed.
‘For two good names, hey?’ says Mr
George, shaking his head and still composedly smoking. ‘No. That's no=
t my
sort either.’
Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually slidi=
ng
down in his chair since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes =
with
a voice in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the
usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him. For he
seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating his late
attentions.
‘Ha!’ he observes when he is in tr=
im
again. ‘If you could have traced out the captain, Mr George, it would
have been the making of you. If when you first came here, in consequence of=
our
advertisement in the newspapers--when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the
advertisements of my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark t=
heir
capital in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to giv=
e me
a lift with my little pittance-- if at that time you could have helped us, =
Mr
George, it would have been the making of you.’
‘I was willing enough to be 'made,' as y=
ou
call it,’ says Mr George, smoking not quite so placidly as before, for
since the entrance of Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a
fascination, not of the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as =
she
stands by her grandfather's chair, ‘but on the whole, I am glad I was=
n't
now.’
‘Why, Mr George? In the name of--of
brimstone, why?’ says Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of
exasperation. (Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs
Smallweed in her slumber.)
‘For two reasons, comrade.’
‘And what two reasons, Mr George? In the
name of the--’
‘Of our friend in the city?’ sugge=
sts Mr
George, composedly drinking.
‘Aye, if you like. What two reasons?R=
17;
‘In the first place,’ returns Mr
George, but still looking at Judy as if she being so old and so like her
grandfather it is indifferent which of the two he addresses, ‘you
gentlemen took me in. You advertised that Mr Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you
hold to the saying 'Once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of somet=
hing
to his advantage.’
‘Well?’ returns the old man shrilly
and sharply.
‘Well!’ says Mr George, smoking on=
. ‘It
wouldn't have been much to his advantage to have been clapped into prison by
the whole bill and judgment trade of London.’
‘How do you know that? Some of his rich
relations might have paid his debts or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had
taken US in. He owed us immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangl=
ed
him than had no return. If I sit here thinking of him,’ snarls the old
man, holding up his impotent ten fingers, ‘I want to strangle him now=
.’
And in a sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs
Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.
‘I don't need to be told,’ returns=
the
trooper, taking his pipe from his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes b=
ack
from following the progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning
low, ‘that he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his
right hand many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with
him when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him aft=
er
he had run through everything and broken down everything beneath him--when =
he
held a pistol to his head.’
‘I wish he had let it off,’ says t=
he
benevolent old man, ‘and blown his head into as many pieces as he owed
pounds!’
‘That would have been a smash indeed,=
217;
returns the trooper coolly; ‘any way, he had been young, hopeful, and
handsome in the days gone by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was
neither, to lead to a result so much to his advantage. That's reason number
one.’
‘I hope number two's as good?’ sna=
rls
the old man.
‘Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason.=
If
I had found him, I must have gone to the other world to look. He was there.=
’
‘How do you know he was there?’
‘He wasn't here.’
‘How do you know he wasn't here?’<= o:p>
‘Don't lose your temper as well as your money,’ says Mr George, calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. = 8216;He was drowned long before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship's side. Whether intentionally or accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your friend in= the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr Smallweed?’ he adds after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the empty pipe.<= o:p>
‘Tune!’ replied the old man. ̵=
6;No.
We never have tunes here.’
‘That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury
soldiers to it, so it's the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty
granddaughter --excuse me, miss--will condescend to take care of this pipe =
for
two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good evening, Mr
Smallweed!’
‘My dear friend!’ the old man gives
him both his hands.
‘So you think your friend in the city wi=
ll
be hard upon me if I fall in a payment?’ says the trooper, looking do=
wn
upon him like a giant.
‘My dear friend, I am afraid he will,=
217;
returns the old man, looking up at him like a pygmy.
Mr George laughs, and with a glance at Mr
Smallweed and a parting salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the
parlour, clashing imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he g=
oes.
‘You're a damned rogue,’ says the =
old
gentleman, making a hideous grimace at the door as he shuts it. ‘But =
I'll
lime you, you dog, I'll lime you!’
After this amiable remark, his spirit soars in=
to
those enchanting regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have
opened to it, and again he and Mrs Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two
unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.
While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr
George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a gra=
ve-
enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He st=
ops
hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to Astley's
Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and the feats of
strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye; disapproves of the comb=
ats
as giving evidences of unskilful swordsmanship; but is touched home by the =
sentiments.
In the last scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and
condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the Union
Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.
The theatre over, Mr George comes across the w=
ater
again and makes his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and
Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hot=
els
and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting- men, swordsmen,
footguards, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions, and a large medley of
shabbiness and shrinking out of sight. Penetrating to the heart of this reg=
ion,
he arrives by a court and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick build=
ing
composed of bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of
which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S SHOOTING
GALLERY, &c.
Into George's Shooting Gallery, &c., he go=
es;
and in it there are gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened tar=
gets
for rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances, and =
all
necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these sports or exercises
being pursued in George's Shooting Gallery to- night, which is so devoid of
company that a little grotesque man with a large head has it all to himself=
and
lies asleep upon the floor.
The little man is dressed something like a
gunsmith, in a green- baize apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty
with gunpowder and begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the lig=
ht before
a glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is the
strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he has been
working. He is a little man with a face all crushed together, who appears, =
from
a certain blue and speckled appearance that one of his cheeks presents, to =
have
been blown up, in the way of business, at some odd time or times.
‘Phil!’ says the trooper in a quiet
voice.
‘All right!’ cries Phil, scramblin=
g to
his feet.
‘Anything been doing?’
‘Flat as ever so much swipes,’ says
Phil. ‘Five dozen rifle and a dozen pistol. As to aim!’ Phil gi=
ves
a howl at the recollection.
‘Shut up shop, Phil!’
As Phil moves about to execute this order, it
appears that he is lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled =
side
of his face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black o=
ne,
which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather sinister
appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands that could possi=
bly
take place consistently with the retention of all the fingers, for they are
notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over. He appears to be very strong and
lifts heavy benches about as if he had no idea what weight was. He has a
curious way of limping round the gallery with his shoulder against the wall=
and
tacking off at objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to
them, which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally calle=
d ‘Phil's
mark.’
This custodian of George's Gallery in George's
absence concludes his proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and
turned out all the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging =
out
from a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being dra=
wn
to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed and Phil mak=
es
his.
‘Phil!’ says the master, walking
towards him without his coat and waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than
ever in his braces. ‘You were found in a doorway, weren't you?’=
‘Gutter,’ says Phil. ‘Watchm=
an
tumbled over me.’
‘Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU =
from
the beginning.’
‘As nat'ral as possible,’ says Phi=
l.
‘Good night!’
‘Good night, guv'ner.’
Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds=
it
necessary to shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at h=
is
mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the rifle- distance and
looking up at the moon now shining through the skylights, strides to his own
mattress by a shorter route and goes to bed too.
Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, though the evening is hot, for both Mr Tulkinghorn's windows are wi=
de
open, and the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable
characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January with ice =
and
snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long vacation weather. They
enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like peaches, and knees like bunches =
of
blossoms, and rosy swellings for calves to its legs and muscles to its arms=
, to
look tolerably cool to-night.
Plenty of dust comes in at Mr Tulkinghorn's
windows, and plenty more has generated among his furniture and papers. It l=
ies
thick everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way takes
fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as much dust in=
the
eyes of Allegory as the law--or Mr Tulkinghorn, one of its trustiest
representatives--may scatter, on occasion, in the eyes of the laity.
In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal
article into which his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all thi=
ngs
of earth, animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr Tulkinghorn sits at one =
of
the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man,
close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a price=
less
bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many
secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has h=
is
bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he
descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, a=
nd
heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back
encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours=
a
radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to f=
ind
itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern
grapes.
Mr Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the
open window, enjoys his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years =
of
silence and seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than e=
ver,
he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at that
twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with darkening wood=
s in
the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in town, and perhaps sparing a
thought or two for himself, and his family history, and his money, and his
will--all a mystery to every one--and that one bachelor friend of his, a ma=
n of
the same mould and a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he w=
as
seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is supposed) an
impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold watch to his hair-dres=
ser
one summer evening and walked leisurely home to the Temple and hanged himse=
lf.
But Mr Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to po=
nder
at his usual length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modest=
ly
and uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining man
who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him fill his
glass.
‘Now, Snagsby,’ says Mr Tulkinghor=
n, ‘to
go over this odd story again.’
‘If you please, sir.’
‘You told me when you were so good as to
step round here last night--’
‘For which I must ask you to excuse me i=
f it
was a liberty, sir; but I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest=
in
that person, and I thought it possible that you might--just--wish--to--R=
17;
Mr Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to a=
ny
conclusion or to admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. S=
o Mr
Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, ‘I must ask yo=
u to
excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.’
‘Not at all,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn.=
‘You
told me, Snagsby, that you put on your hat and came round without mentioning
your intention to your wife. That was prudent I think, because it's not a
matter of such importance that it requires to be mentioned.’
‘Well, sir,’ returns Mr Snagsby, &=
#8216;you
see, my little woman is--not to put too fine a point upon it--inquisitive.
She's inquisitive. Poor little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good=
for
her to have her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it--I sh=
ould
say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it concerns he=
r or
not--especially not. My little woman has a very active mind, sir.’
Mr Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring
cough behind his hand, ‘Dear me, very fine wine indeed!’
‘Therefore you kept your visit to yourse=
lf
last night?’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘And to-night too?’
‘Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little
woman is at present in-- not to put too fine a point on it--in a pious stat=
e,
or in what she considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is =
the
name they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a great
deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not quite favourabl=
e to
his style myself. That's neither here nor there. My little woman being enga=
ged
in that way made it easier for me to step round in a quiet manner.’
Mr Tulkinghorn assents. ‘Fill your glass,
Snagsby.’
‘Thank you, sir, I am sure,’ retur=
ns
the stationer with his cough of deference. ‘This is wonderfully fine
wine, sir!’
‘It is a rare wine now,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn. ‘It is fifty years old.’
‘Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surpris=
ed
to hear it, I am sure. It might be--any age almost.’ After rendering =
this
general tribute to the port, Mr Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology be=
hind
his hand for drinking anything so precious.
‘Will you run over, once again, what the=
boy
said?’ asks Mr Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his
rusty smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.
‘With pleasure, sir.’
Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixit=
y,
the law-stationer repeats Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his
house. On coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and br=
eaks
off with, ‘Dear me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other gentleman
present!’
Mr Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an
attentive face between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the
table, a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he
himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of the
windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not creaked, nor=
has
a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third person stands there with=
his
attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind hi=
m, a
composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-e=
yed
man in black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr Snagsby a=
s if
he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about him at
first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.
‘Don't mind this gentleman,’ says =
Mr
Tulkinghorn in his quiet way. ‘This is only Mr Bucket.’
‘Oh, indeed, sir?’ returns the
stationer, expressing by a cough that he is quite in the dark as to who Mr
Bucket may be.
‘I wanted him to hear this story,’
says the lawyer, ‘because I have half a mind (for a reason) to know m=
ore
of it, and he is very intelligent in such things. What do you say to this,
Bucket?’
‘It's very plain, sir. Since our people =
have
moved this boy on, and he's not to be found on his old lay, if Mr Snagsby d=
on't
object to go down with me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we can have=
him
here in less than a couple of hours' time. I can do it without Mr Snagsby, =
of
course, but this is the shortest way.’
‘Mr Bucket is a detective officer, Snags=
by,’
says the lawyer in explanation.
‘Is he indeed, sir?’ says Mr Snags=
by
with a strong tendency in his clump of hair to stand on end.
‘And if you have no real objection to
accompany Mr Bucket to the place in question,’ pursues the lawyer, =
8216;I
shall feel obliged to you if you will do so.’
In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr
Snagsby, Bucket dips down to the bottom of his mind.
‘Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy,=
’
he says. ‘You won't do that. It's all right as far as the boy's
concerned. We shall only bring him here to ask him a question or so I want =
to put
to him, and he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It'll be a g=
ood
job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent away =
all
right. Don't you be afraid of hurting him; you an't going to do that.’=
;
‘Very well, Mr Tulkinghorn!’ cries=
Mr
Snagsby cheerfully. And reassured, ‘Since that's the case--’
‘Yes! And lookee here, Mr Snagsby,’
resumes Bucket, taking him aside by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the
breast, and speaking in a confidential tone. ‘You're a man of the wor=
ld,
you know, and a man of business, and a man of sense. That's what YOU are.=
8217;
‘I am sure I am much obliged to you for =
your
good opinion,’ returns the stationer with his cough of modesty, ̵=
6;but--’
‘That's what YOU are, you know,’ s=
ays
Bucket. ‘Now, it an't necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in =
your
business, which is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awa=
ke
and have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle=
in
your business once)--it an't necessary to say to a man like you that it's t=
he
best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet. Don't you see?
Quiet!’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ returns the
other.
‘I don't mind telling YOU,’ says
Bucket with an engaging appearance of frankness, ‘that as far as I can
understand it, there seems to be a doubt whether this dead person wasn't
entitled to a little property, and whether this female hasn't been up to so=
me
games respecting that property, don't you see?’
‘Oh!’ says Mr Snagsby, but not
appearing to see quite distinctly.
‘Now, what YOU want,’ pursues Buck=
et,
again tapping Mr Snagsby on the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner=
, ‘is
that every person should have their rights according to justice. That's what
YOU want.’
‘To be sure,’ returns Mr Snagsby w=
ith
a nod.
‘On account of which, and at the same ti=
me
to oblige a--do you call it, in your business, customer or client? I forget=
how
my uncle used to call it.’
‘Why, I generally say customer myself,=
8217;
replies Mr Snagsby.
‘You're right!’ returns Mr Bucket,=
shaking
hands with him quite affectionately. ‘--On account of which, and at t=
he
same time to oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in
confidence, to Tom-all-Alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet ever
afterwards and never mention it to any one. That's about your intentions, i=
f I
understand you?’
‘You are right, sir. You are right,̵=
7;
says Mr Snagsby.
‘Then here's your hat,’ returns his
new friend, quite as intimate with it as if he had made it; ‘and if
you're ready, I am.’
They leave Mr Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on=
the
surface of his unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into=
the
streets.
‘You don't happen to know a very good so=
rt
of person of the name of Gridley, do you?’ says Bucket in friendly
converse as they descend the stairs.
‘No,’ says Mr Snagsby, considering=
, ‘I
don't know anybody of that name. Why?’
‘Nothing particular,’ says Bucket;=
‘only
having allowed his temper to get a little the better of him and having been
threatening some respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warr=
ant
I have got against him--which it's a pity that a man of sense should do.=
217;
As they walk along, Mr Snagsby observes, as a
novelty, that however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in
some undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going=
to
turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind =
of
going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last moment. Now=
and
then, when they pass a police-constable on his beat, Mr Snagsby notices that
both the constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come
towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and to gaze
into space. In a few instances, Mr Bucket, coming behind some under-sized y=
oung
man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair twisted into one flat curl on
each side of his head, almost without glancing at him touches him with his
stick, upon which the young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For t=
he
most part Mr Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as=
the
great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not much
diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.
When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr Bucket stops for a moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from= the constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own particular bull's-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained, unventilated, deep in black m= ud and corrupt water-- though the roads are dry elsewhere--and reeking with su= ch smells and sights that he, who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses. Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are o= ther streets and courts so infamous that Mr Snagsby sickens in body and mind and feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal gulf.<= o:p>
‘Draw off a bit here, Mr Snagsby,’
says Bucket as a kind of shabby palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded=
by
a noisy crowd. ‘Here's the fever coming up the street!’
As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leavi=
ng
that object of attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of
horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and
with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth flits abo=
ut
them until they leave the place.
‘Are those the fever-houses, Darby?̵= 7; Mr Bucket coolly asks as he turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.<= o:p>
Darby replies that ‘all them are,’=
and
further that in all, for months and months, the people ‘have been dow=
n by
dozens’ and have been carried out dead and dying ‘like sheep wi=
th
the rot.’ Bucket observing to Mr Snagsby as they go on again that he =
looks
a little poorly, Mr Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe=
the
dreadful air.
There is inquiry made at various houses for a =
boy
named Jo. As few people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign,
there is much reference to Mr Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the Colo=
nel,
or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick. Mr Sna=
gsby
describes over and over again. There are conflicting opinions respecting the
original of his picture. Some think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick.=
The
Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr Snagsby =
and
his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid
depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr Bucket. Whenever they move, and the
angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, =
and
in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before.
At last there is a lair found out where Toughy=
, or
the Tough Subject, lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough=
Subject
may be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr Snagsby and the proprietress of t=
he
house--a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring out of a heap =
of
rags on the floor of a dog- hutch which is her private apartment--leads to =
the
establishment of this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a
bottle of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon.
‘And who have we got here to-night?̵=
7;
says Mr Bucket, opening another door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. =
8216;Two
drunken men, eh? And two women? The men are sound enough,’ turning ba=
ck
each sleeper's arm from his face to look at him. ‘Are these your good
men, my dears?’
‘Yes, sir,’ returns one of the wom=
en. ‘They
are our husbands.’
‘Brickmakers, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What are you doing here? You don't belo=
ng
to London.’
‘No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.=
217;
‘Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?’
‘Saint Albans.’
‘Come up on the tramp?’
‘We walked up yesterday. There's no work
down with us at present, but we have done no good by coming here, and shall=
do
none, I expect.’
‘That's not the way to do much good,R=
17;
says Mr Bucket, turning his head in the direction of the unconscious figure=
s on
the ground.
‘It an't indeed,’ replies the woman
with a sigh. ‘Jenny and me knows it full well.’
The room, though two or three feet higher than=
the
door, is so low that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the
blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every sense; even=
the
gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted air. There are a couple =
of
benches and a higher bench by way of table. The men lie asleep where they
stumbled down, but the women sit by the candle. Lying in the arms of the wo=
man
who has spoken is a very young child.
‘Why, what age do you call that little
creature?’ says Bucket. ‘It looks as if it was born yesterday.&=
#8217;
He is not at all rough about it; and as he turns his light gently on the
infant, Mr Snagsby is strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with
light, that he has seen in pictures.
‘He is not three weeks old yet, sir,R=
17;
says the woman.
‘Is he your child?’
‘Mine.’
The other woman, who was bending over it when =
they
came in, stoops down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.
‘You seem as fond of it as if you were t=
he
mother yourself,’ says Mr Bucket.
‘I was the mother of one like it, master,
and it died.’
‘Ah, Jenny, Jenny!’ says the other
woman to her. ‘Better so. Much better to think of dead than alive, Je=
nny!
Much better!’
‘Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I
hope,’ returns Bucket sternly, ‘as to wish your own child dead?=
’
‘God knows you are right, master,’=
she
returns. ‘I am not. I'd stand between it and death with my own life i=
f I
could, as true as any pretty lady.’
‘Then don't talk in that wrong manner,=
8217;
says Mr Bucket, mollified again. ‘Why do you do it?’
‘It's brought into my head, master,̵=
7;
returns the woman, her eyes filling with tears, ‘when I look down at =
the
child lying so. If it was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, I shou=
ld
take on so. I know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers--war=
n't
I, Jenny?--and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this place. L=
ook
at them,’ glancing at the sleepers on the ground. ‘Look at the =
boy
you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good turn. Think of the child=
ren
that your business lays with often and often, and that YOU see grow up!R=
17;
‘Well, well,’ says Mr Bucket, R=
16;you
train him respectable, and he'll be a comfort to you, and look after you in
your old age, you know.’
‘I mean to try hard,’ she answers,
wiping her eyes. ‘But I have been a-thinking, being over-tired to-nig=
ht
and not well with the ague, of all the many things that'll come in his way.=
My
master will be against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to =
fear
his home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and ev=
er
so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he should be turned bad 'spite of
all I could do, and the time should come when I should sit by him in his sl=
eep,
made hard and changed, an't it likely I should think of him as he lies in my
lap now and wish he had died as Jenny's child died!’
‘There, there!’ says Jenny. ‘=
;Liz,
you're tired and ill. Let me take him.’
In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress,=
but
quickly readjusts it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has =
been
lying.
‘It's my dead child,’ says Jenny,
walking up and down as she nurses, ‘that makes me love this child so
dear, and it's my dead child that makes her love it so dear too, as even to
think of its being taken away from her now. While she thinks that, I think =
what
fortune would I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, i=
f we
knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!’
As Mr Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his co=
ugh
of sympathy, a step is heard without. Mr Bucket throws his light into the
doorway and says to Mr Snagsby, ‘Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will=
HE
do?’
‘That's Jo,’ says Mr Snagsby.
Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a
ragged figure in a magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended a=
gainst
the law in not having moved on far enough. Mr Snagsby, however, giving him =
the
consolatory assurance, ‘It's only a job you will be paid for, Jo,R=
17;
he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr Bucket for a little private
confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though out of breath.
‘I have squared it with the lad,’ =
says
Mr Bucket, returning, ‘and it's all right. Now, Mr Snagsby, we're rea=
dy
for you.’
First, Jo has to complete his errand of good
nature by handing over the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with
the laconic verbal direction that ‘it's to be all took d'rectly.̵=
7;
Secondly, Mr Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual pana=
cea
for an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr Bucket has to take Jo by=
the
arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him, without which
observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other Subject could be
professionally conducted to Lincoln's Inn Fields. These arrangements comple=
ted,
they give the women good night and come out once more into black and foul
Tom-all-Alone's.
By the noisome ways through which they descend=
ed
into that pit, they gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and
whistling, and skulking about them until they come to the verge, where
restoration of the bull's-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a
concourse of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.
Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to Mr
Snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr Tulkinghorn=
's
gate.
As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr Tulkinghorn's
chambers being on the first floor), Mr Bucket mentions that he has the key =
of
the outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man so
expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the door and
makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of preparation.
Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, wher=
e a
lamp is burning, and so into Mr Tulkinghorn's usual room--the room where he
drank his old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned
candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.
Mr Bucket, still having his professional hold =
of
Jo and appearing to Mr Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, make=
s a
little way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.
‘What's the matter?’ says Bucket i=
n a
whisper.
‘There she is!’ cries Jo.
‘Who!’
‘The lady!’
A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the
middle of the room, where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and
silent. The front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of
their entrance and remains like a statue.
‘Now, tell me,’ says Bucket aloud,=
‘how
you know that to be the lady.’
‘I know the wale,’ replies Jo,
staring, ‘and the bonnet, and the gownd.’
‘Be quite sure of what you say, Tough,=
8217;
returns Bucket, narrowly observant of him. ‘Look again.’
‘I am a-looking as hard as ever I can lo=
ok,’
says Jo with starting eyes, ‘and that there's the wale, the bonnet, a=
nd
the gownd.’
‘What about those rings you told me of?&=
#8217;
asks Bucket.
‘A-sparkling all over here,’ says =
Jo,
rubbing the fingers of his left hand on the knuckles of his right without
taking his eyes from the figure. The figure removes the right-hand glove and
shows the hand.
‘Now, what do you say to that?’ as=
ks
Bucket.
Jo shakes his head. ‘Not rings a bit like
them. Not a hand like that.’
‘What are you talking of?’ says
Bucket, evidently pleased though, and well pleased too.
‘Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicate=
r,
and a deal smaller,’ returns Jo.
‘Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother n=
ext,’
says Mr Bucket. ‘Do you recollect the lady's voice?’
‘I think I does,’ says Jo.
The figure speaks. ‘Was it at all like t=
his?
I will speak as long as you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or=
at
all like this voice?’
Jo looks aghast at Mr Bucket. ‘Not a bit=
!’
‘Then, what,’ retorts that worthy,
pointing to the figure, ‘did you say it was the lady for?’
‘Cos,’ says Jo with a perplexed st=
are
but without being at all shaken in his certainty, ‘cos that there's t=
he wale,
the bonnet, and the gownd. It is her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor=
yet
her rings, nor yet her woice. But that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the
gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's her height =
wot
she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it.’
‘Well!’ says Mr Bucket slightly, &=
#8216;we
haven't got much good out of YOU. But, however, here's five shillings for y=
ou.
Take care how you spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble.’ Buc=
ket
stealthily tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters--whic=
h is
a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of skill--and =
then
puts them, in a little pile, into the boy's hand and takes him out to the d=
oor,
leaving Mr Snagsby, not by any means comfortable under these mysterious
circumstances, alone with the veiled figure. But on Mr Tulkinghorn's coming
into the room, the veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwom=
an
is revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.
‘Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense,’
says Mr Tulkinghorn with his usual equanimity. ‘I will give you no
further trouble about this little wager.’
‘You will do me the kindness to remember,
sir, that I am not at present placed?’ says mademoiselle.
‘Certainly, certainly!’
‘And to confer upon me the favour of your
distinguished recommendation?’
‘By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense.=
217;
‘A word from Mr Tulkinghorn is so powerf=
ul.’
‘It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle.&=
#8217;
‘Receive the assurance of my devoted
gratitude, dear sir.’
‘Good night.’
Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native
gentility; and Mr Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be
groom of the ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs,=
not
without gallantry.
‘Well, Bucket?’ quoth Mr Tulkingho=
rn
on his return.
‘It's all squared, you see, as I squared=
it
myself, sir. There an't a doubt that it was the other one with this one's d=
ress
on. The boy was exact respecting colours and everything. Mr Snagsby, I prom=
ised
you as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don't say it wasn't don=
e!’
‘You have kept your word, sir,’
returns the stationer; ‘and if I can be of no further use, Mr
Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman will be getting anxious--’
‘Thank you, Snagsby, no further use,R=
17;
says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘I am quite indebted to you for the trouble you =
have
taken already.’
‘Not at all, sir. I wish you good night.=
’
‘You see, Mr Snagsby,’ says Mr Buc=
ket,
accompanying him to the door and shaking hands with him over and over again=
, ‘what
I like in you is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what YOU =
are.
When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's done w=
ith
and gone, and there's an end of it. That's what YOU do.’
‘That is certainly what I endeavour to d=
o,
sir,’ returns Mr Snagsby.
‘No, you don't do yourself justice. It a=
n't
what you endeavour to do,’ says Mr Bucket, shaking hands with him and
blessing him in the tenderest manner, ‘it's what you DO. That's what I
estimate in a man in your way of business.’
Mr Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes
homeward so confused by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his
being awake and out--doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he
goes--doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He is
presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable reality of Mrs
Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and
night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to the police-station with official
intelligence of her husband's being made away with, and who within the last=
two
hours has passed through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum.=
But
as the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!
We came home from Mr Boythorn's after six plea=
sant
weeks. We were often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lod=
ge
where we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's wife;
but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on Sundays. There was
company at Chesney Wold; and although several beautiful faces surrounded he=
r,
her face retained the same influence on me as at first. I do not quite know
even now whether it was painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards =
her
or made me shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I
know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they had don=
e at
first, to that old time of my life.
I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sunda=
ys,
that what this lady so curiously was to me, I was to her--I mean that I
disturbed her thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way.
But when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and
unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt the wh=
ole
state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and unreasonable, and I
remonstrated with myself about it as much as I could.
One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr
Boythorn's house, I had better mention in this place.
I was walking in the garden with Ada and when I
was told that some one wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where
this person was waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off =
her
shoes and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and
lightened.
‘Mademoiselle,’ she began, looking
fixedly at me with her too-eager eyes, though otherwise presenting an agree=
able
appearance and speaking neither with boldness nor servility, ‘I have
taken a great liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being =
so
amiable, mademoiselle.’
‘No excuse is necessary,’ I return=
ed, ‘if
you wish to speak to me.’
‘That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thou=
sand
thanks for the permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?’ she
said in a quick, natural way.
‘Certainly,’ said I.
‘Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen
then, if you please. I have left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so
high, so very high. Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!’ Her quickne=
ss
anticipated what I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. &=
#8216;It
is not for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high=
, so
very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that.’
‘Go on, if you please,’ said I.
‘Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful =
for
your politeness. Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find servi=
ce
with a young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,
accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour of bei=
ng
your domestic!’
‘I am sorry--’ I began.
‘Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle=
!’
she said with an involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. ‘=
;Let
me hope a moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired t=
han
that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service would be =
less
distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that, I know tha=
t I
should win less, as to wages here. Good. I am content.’
‘I assure you,’ said I, quite
embarrassed by the mere idea of having such an attendant, ‘that I kee=
p no
maid--’
‘Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not,
when you can have one so devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve yo=
u;
who would be so true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I
wish with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present. Take=
me
as I am. For nothing!’
She was so singularly earnest that I drew back,
almost afraid of her. Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she sti=
ll
pressed herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always w=
ith
a certain grace and propriety.
‘Mademoiselle, I come from the South cou=
ntry
where we are quick and where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was t=
oo
high for me; I was too high for her. It is done--past--finished! Receive me=
as
your domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you
figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will-- no matter, I will do my
utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you will not repent
it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will serve you well. You do=
n't
know how well!’
There was a lowering energy in her face as she
stood looking at me while I explained the impossibility of my engaging her
(without thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),
which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets of Pari=
s in
the reign of terror.
She heard me out without interruption and then
said with her pretty accent and in her mildest voice, ‘Hey, mademoise=
lle,
I have received my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and se=
ek
what I have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?̵=
7;
She looked at me more intently as she took it,=
and
seemed to take note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. ‘I
fear I surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?’ she said
with a parting curtsy.
I confessed that she had surprised us all.
‘I took an oath, mademoiselle,’ she
said, smiling, ‘and I wanted to stamp it on my mind so that I might k=
eep
it faithfully. And I will! Adieu, mademoiselle!’ So ended our confere=
nce,
which I was very glad to bring to a close. I supposed she went away from the
village, for I saw her no more; and nothing else occurred to disturb our
tranquil summer pleasures until six weeks were out and we returned home as I
began just now by saying.
At that time, and for a good many weeks after =
that
time, Richard was constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or
Sunday and remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on
horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back again e=
arly
next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was very industrious, =
but
I was not easy in my mind about him. It appeared to me that his industry was
all misdirected. I could not find that it led to anything but the formation=
of
delusive hopes in connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so
much sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told u=
s,
and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he and Ada were=
to
take I don't know how many thousands of pounds must be finally established =
if
there were any sense or justice in the Court of Chancery--but oh, what a gr=
eat
IF that sounded in my ears--and that this happy conclusion could not be much
longer delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that
side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the infatuation.=
He
had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he saw Miss Flite there
daily, how they talked together, and how he did her little kindnesses, and =
how,
while he laughed at her, he pitied her from his heart. But he never
thought--never, my poor, dear, sanguine Richard, capable of so much happine=
ss
then, and with such better things before him-- what a fatal link was riveti=
ng
between his fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her c=
aged
birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.
Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in
anything he said or did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of
the east wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict
silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to meet
Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in waiting fo=
r me
at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk together. I found him
there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in arm.
‘Well, Richard,’ said I as soon as=
I
could begin to be grave with him, ‘are you beginning to feel more set=
tled
now?’
‘Oh, yes, my dear!’ returned Richa=
rd. ‘I'm
all right enough.’
‘But settled?’ said I.
‘How do you mean, settled?’ return=
ed
Richard with his gay laugh.
‘Settled in the law,’ said I.
‘Oh, aye,’ replied Richard, ‘=
;I'm
all right enough.’
‘You said that before, my dear Richard.&=
#8217;
‘And you don't think it's an answer, eh?
Well! Perhaps it's not. Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling
down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why, no, I can't say I am settling down=
,’
said Richard, strongly emphasizing ‘down,’ as if that expressed=
the
difficulty, ‘because one can't settle down while this business remain=
s in
such an unsettled state. When I say this business, of course I mean the--
forbidden subject.’
‘Do you think it will ever be in a settl=
ed
state?’ said I.
‘Not the least doubt of it,’ answe=
red
Richard.
We walked a little way without speaking, and
presently Richard addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thu=
s: ‘My
dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant =
sort
of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love her dearly--better and
better every day--but constant to myself. (Somehow, I mean something that I
can't very well express, but you'll make it out.) If I were a more constant
sort of fellow, I should have held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carb=
oy
like grim death, and should have begun to be steady and systematic by this
time, and shouldn't be in debt, and--’
‘
‘Yes,’ said Richard, ‘I am a
little so, my dear. Also, I have taken rather too much to billiards and that
sort of thing. Now the murder's out; you despise me, Esther, don't you?R=
17;
‘You know I don't,’ said I.
‘You are kinder to me than I often am to
myself,’ he returned. ‘My dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate =
dog
not to be more settled, but how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an
unfinished house, you couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to
leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply
yourself to anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I was born into this
unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to
unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a =
suit
of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now,
conscious sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding
cousin Ada.’
We were in a solitary place, and he put his ha=
nds
before his eyes and sobbed as he said the words.
‘Oh, Richard!’ said I. ‘Do n=
ot
be so moved. You have a noble nature, and Ada's love may make you worthier
every day.’
‘I know, my dear,’ he replied,
pressing my arm, ‘I know all that. You mustn't mind my being a little
soft now, for I have had all this upon my mind for a long time, and have of=
ten
meant to speak to you, and have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes
courage. I know what the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't =
do
it. I am too unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I =
do
her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can't last for
ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in our favour, =
and
then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!’
It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see=
the
tears start out between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting=
to
me than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.
‘I have looked well into the papers, Est=
her.
I have been deep in them for months,’ he continued, recovering his
cheerfulness in a moment, ‘and you may rely upon it that we shall com=
e out
triumphant. As to years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven kn=
ows!
And there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a speedy
close; in fact, it's on the paper now. It will be all right at last, and th=
en
you shall see!’
Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. K=
enge
and Carboy in the same category with Mr Badger, I asked him when he intende=
d to
be articled in Lincoln's Inn.
‘There again! I think not at all, Esther=
,’
he returned with an effort. ‘I fancy I have had enough of it. Having
worked at Jarndyce and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst
for the law and satisfied myself that I shouldn't like it. Besides, I find =
it
unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of action. So
what,’ continued Richard, confident again by this time, ‘do I
naturally turn my thoughts to?’
‘I can't imagine,’ said I.
‘Don't look so serious,’ returned
Richard, ‘because it's the best thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am
certain. It's not as if I wanted a profession for life. These proceedings w=
ill
come to a termination, and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a
pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited=
to
my temporary condition--I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I
naturally turn my thoughts to?’
I looked at him and shook my head.
‘What,’ said Richard, in a tone of
perfect conviction, ‘but the army!’
‘The army?’ said I.
‘The army, of course. What I have to do =
is
to get a commission; and--there I am, you know!’ said Richard.
And then he showed me, proved by elaborate
calculations in his pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two
hundred pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracte=
d no
debt at all within a corresponding period in the army--as to which he had q=
uite
made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of four hundred pounds in=
a
year, or two thousand pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. A=
nd
then he spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in
withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness with which =
he
aspired--as in thought he always did, I know full well--to repay her love, =
and
to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to
acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorel=
y.
For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and so
surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight that ruined
everything it rested on!
I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I
felt, and all the hope I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ad=
a's
sake not to put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assen=
ted,
riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing the
brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into--alas, when the
grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long talk, but it al=
ways
came back to that, in substance.
At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy
Jellyby had appointed to wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood=
of
Newman Street. Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soo=
n as
I appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together.
‘Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther=
,’
said Caddy, ‘and got the key for us. So if you will walk round and ro=
und
here with me, we can lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I
wanted to see your dear good face about.’
‘Very well, my dear,’ said I. R=
16;Nothing
could be better.’ So Caddy, after affectionately squeezing the dear g=
ood
face as she called it, locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to wa=
lk
round the garden very cosily.
‘You see, Esther,’ said Caddy, who
thoroughly enjoyed a little confidence, ‘after you spoke to me about =
its
being wrong to marry without Ma's knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the
dark respecting our engagement--though I don't believe Ma cares much for me=
, I
must say--I thought it right to mention your opinions to Prince. In the fir=
st
place because I want to profit by everything you tell me, and in the second
place because I have no secrets from Prince.’
‘I hope he approved, Caddy?’
‘Oh, my dear! I assure you he would appr=
ove
of anything you could say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!&=
#8217;
‘Indeed!’
‘Esther, it's enough to make anybody but=
me
jealous,’ said Caddy, laughing and shaking her head; ‘but it on=
ly
makes me joyful, for you are the first friend I ever had, and the best frie=
nd I
ever can have, and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me.=
8217;
‘Upon my word, Caddy,’ said I, =
216;you
are in the general conspiracy to keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?=
8217;
‘Well! I am going to tell you,’
replied Caddy, crossing her hands confidentially upon my arm. ‘So we
talked a good deal about it, and so I said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss
Summerson--'‘
‘I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson'?=
’
‘No. I didn't!’ cried Caddy, great=
ly
pleased and with the brightest of faces. ‘I said, 'Esther.' I said to
Prince, 'As Esther is decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed =
it
to me, and always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are =
so
fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth to Ma
whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,' said I, 'that Esther thinks
that I should be in a better, and truer, and more honourable position
altogether if you did the same to your papa.'‘
‘Yes, my dear,’ said I. ‘Est=
her
certainly does think so.’
‘So I was right, you see!’ exclaim=
ed
Caddy. ‘Well! This troubled Prince a good deal, not because he had the
least doubt about it, but because he is so considerate of the feelings of o=
ld Mr
Turveydrop; and he had his apprehensions that old Mr Turveydrop might break=
his
heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting manner or
other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr Turveydrop might
consider it undutiful and might receive too great a shock. For old Mr
Turveydrop's deportment is very beautiful, you know, Esther,’ said Ca=
ddy,
‘and his feelings are extremely sensitive.’
‘Are they, my dear?’
‘Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so.
Now, this has caused my darling child--I didn't mean to use the expression =
to
you, Esther,’ Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, ̵=
6;but
I generally call Prince my darling child.’
I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and =
went
on.
‘This has caused him, Esther--’
‘Caused whom, my dear?’
‘Oh, you tiresome thing!’ said Cad=
dy,
laughing, with her pretty face on fire. ‘My darling child, if you ins=
ist
upon it! This has caused him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, fr=
om
day to day, in a very anxious manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if Miss
Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be prevailed upon=
to
be present when I broke the subject, I think I could do it.' So I promised I
would ask you. And I made up my mind, besides,’ said Caddy, looking a=
t me
hopefully but timidly, ‘that if you consented, I would ask you afterw=
ards
to come with me to Ma. This is what I meant when I said in my note that I h=
ad a
great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you c=
ould
grant it, Esther, we should both be very grateful.’
‘Let me see, Caddy,’ said I,
pretending to consider. ‘Really, I think I could do a greater thing t=
han
that if the need were pressing. I am at your service and the darling child'=
s,
my dear, whenever you like.’
Caddy was quite transported by this reply of m=
ine,
being, I believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as =
any
tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two ro=
und
the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves and made
herself as resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit=
to
the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman Street direct.
Prince was teaching, of course. We found him
engaged with a not very hopeful pupil--a stubborn little girl with a sulky
forehead, a deep voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama--whose case was
certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her
preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordan=
tly
as possible; and when the little girl had changed her shoes and had had her
white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. After a few words =
of
preparation, we then went in search of Mr Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped
with his hat and gloves, as a model of deportment, on the sofa in his priva=
te
apartment--the only comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dres=
sed
at his leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case,
brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.
‘Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby.=
8217;
‘Charmed! Enchanted!’ said Mr
Turveydrop, rising with his high- shouldered bow. ‘Permit me!’
Handing chairs. ‘Be seated!’ Kissing the tips of his left finge=
rs. ‘Overjoyed!’
Shutting his eyes and rolling. ‘My little retreat is made a paradise.=
’
Recomposing himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.
‘Again you find us, Miss Summerson,̵=
7;
said he, ‘using our little arts to polish, polish! Again the sex
stimulates us and rewards us by the condescension of its lovely presence. I=
t is
much in these times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it
since the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent--my patron, if I may
presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under
foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my dear mad=
am.’
I said nothing, which I thought a suitable rep=
ly;
and he took a pinch of snuff.
‘My dear son,’ said Mr Turveydrop,=
‘you
have four schools this afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.’=
;
‘Thank you, father,’ returned Prin=
ce, ‘I
will be sure to be punctual. My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your =
mind
for what I am going to say?’
‘Good heaven!’ exclaimed the model,
pale and aghast as Prince and Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. =
8216;What
is this? Is this lunacy! Or what is this?’
‘Father,’ returned Prince with gre=
at
submission, ‘I love this young lady, and we are engaged.’
‘Engaged!’ cried Mr Turveydrop,
reclining on the sofa and shutting out the sight with his hand. ‘An a=
rrow
launched at my brain by my own child!’
‘We have been engaged for some time, fat=
her,’
faltered Prince, ‘and Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we
should declare the fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the pre=
sent
occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, father.R=
17;
Mr Turveydrop uttered a groan.
‘No, pray don't! Pray don't, father,R=
17;
urged his son. ‘Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,=
and
our first desire is to consider your comfort.’
Mr Turveydrop sobbed.
‘No, pray don't, father!’ cried his
son.
‘Boy,’ said Mr Turveydrop, ‘=
it
is well that your sainted mother is spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare
not. Strike home, sir, strike home!’
‘Pray don't say so, father,’ implo=
red
Prince, in tears. ‘It goes to my heart. I do assure you, father, that=
our
first wish and intention is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not
forget our duty--what is my duty is Caroline's, as we have often said
together--and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote oursel=
ves
to making your life agreeable.’
‘Strike home,’ murmured Mr Turveyd=
rop.
‘Strike home!’ But he seemed to listen, I thought, too.
‘My dear father,’ returned Prince,=
‘we
well know what little comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to, a=
nd
it will always be our study and our pride to provide those before anything.=
If
you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not thin=
k of
being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we
Mr Turveydrop underwent a severe internal stru=
ggle
and came upright on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff
cravat, a perfect model of parental deportment.
‘My son!’ said Mr Turveydrop. R=
16;My
children! I cannot resist your prayer. Be happy!’
His benignity as he raised his future
daughter-in-law and stretched out his hand to his son (who kissed it with
affectionate respect and gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw=
.
‘My children,’ said Mr Turveydrop,
paternally encircling Caddy with his left arm as she sat beside him, and
putting his right hand gracefully on his hip. ‘My son and daughter, y=
our
happiness shall be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live wi=
th
me’--meaning, of course, I will always live with you--’this hou=
se
is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long li=
ve
to share it with me!’
The power of his deportment was such that they=
really
were as much overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself
upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrific=
e in
their favour.
‘For myself, my children,’ said Mr
Turveydrop, ‘I am falling into the sear and yellow leaf, and it is
impossible to say how long the last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment=
may
linger in this weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to
society and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and si=
mple.
My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet, my frugal morni=
ng
meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge your dutiful affection wi=
th
the supply of these requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest.=
217;
They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon
generosity.
‘My son,’ said Mr Turveydrop, R=
16;for
those little points in which you are deficient--points of deportment, which=
are
born with a man, which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be
originated-- you may still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since
the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it =
now.
No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father's poor position with a
feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing to tarnish i=
t.
For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike,=
nor
is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money, and exte=
nd
the connexion as much as possible.’
‘That you may depend I will do, dear fat=
her,
with all my heart,’ replied Prince.
‘I have no doubt of it,’ said Mr
Turveydrop. ‘Your qualities are not shining, my dear child, but they =
are
steady and useful. And to both of you, my children, I would merely observe,=
in
the spirit of a sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting=
, I
believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care of my
simple wants, and bless you both!’
Old Mr Turveydrop then became so very gallant,=
in
honour of the occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn =
at
once if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a very
loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our walk she wa=
s so
happy and so full of old Mr Turveydrop's praises that I would not have said=
a
word in his disparagement for any consideration.
The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the wind=
ows
annoucing that it was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastl=
ier
than ever. The name of poor Mr Jellyby had appeared in the list of bankrupts
but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the dining-room with two
gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, account- books, and papers, making the m=
ost
desperate endeavours to understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be q=
uite
beyond his comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by
mistake and we came upon Mr Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced int=
o a
corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to have g=
iven
up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.
Going upstairs to Mrs Jellyby's room (the chil=
dren
were all screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we
found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, readi=
ng,
and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor.=
She
was so preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat lookin=
g at
me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.
‘Ah! Miss Summerson!’ she said at
last. ‘I was thinking of something so different! I hope you are well.=
I
am happy to see you. Mr Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?’
I hoped in return that Mr Jellyby was quite we=
ll.
‘Why, not quite, my dear,’ said Mrs
Jellyby in the calmest manner. ‘He has been unfortunate in his affairs
and is a little out of spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I
have no time to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred=
and
seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each, either go=
ne
or going to the left bank of the Niger.’
I thought of the one family so near us who were
neither gone nor going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she
could be so placid.
‘You have brought Caddy back, I see,R=
17;
observed Mrs Jellyby with a glance at her daughter. ‘It has become qu=
ite
a novelty to see her here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in
fact obliges me to employ a boy.’
‘I am sure, Ma--’ began Caddy.
‘Now you know, Caddy,’ her mother
mildly interposed, ‘that I DO employ a boy, who is now at his dinner.
What is the use of your contradicting?’
‘I was not going to contradict, Ma,̵=
7;
returned Caddy. ‘I was only going to say that surely you wouldn't hav=
e me
be a mere drudge all my life.’
‘I believe, my dear,’ said Mrs
Jellyby, still opening her letters, casting her bright eyes smilingly over
them, and sorting them as she spoke, ‘that you have a business example
before you in your mother. Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy =
with
the destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such ide=
a.
But you have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy.=
’
‘Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not.R=
17;
‘Of course you have not. Now, if I were =
not
happily so much engaged, Miss Summerson,’ said Mrs Jellyby, sweetly
casting her eyes for a moment on me and considering where to put the partic=
ular
letter she had just opened, ‘this would distress and disappoint me. B=
ut I
have so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so
necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you see.R=
17;
As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as =
Mrs
Jellyby was looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and hea=
d, I
thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and to att=
ract
Mrs Jellyby's attention.
‘Perhaps,’ I began, ‘you will
wonder what has brought me here to interrupt you.’
‘I am always delighted to see Miss
Summerson,’ said Mrs Jellyby, pursuing her employment with a placid
smile. ‘Though I wish,’ and she shook her head, ‘she was =
more
interested in the Borrioboolan project.’
‘I have come with Caddy,’ said I, =
‘because
Caddy justly thinks she ought not to have a secret from her mother and fanc=
ies
I shall encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don't know how) in impart=
ing
one.’
‘Caddy,’ said Mrs Jellyby, pausing=
for
a moment in her occupation and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her
head, ‘you are going to tell me some nonsense.’
Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took h=
er
bonnet off, and letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying
heartily, said, ‘Ma, I am engaged.’
‘Oh, you ridiculous child!’ observ=
ed Mrs
Jellyby with an abstracted air as she looked over the dispatch last opened;=
‘what
a goose you are!’
‘I am engaged, Ma,’ sobbed Caddy, =
‘to
young Mr Turveydrop, at the academy; and old Mr Turveydrop (who is a very
gentlemanly man indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you'll gi=
ve
us yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never cou=
ld!’
sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and of everything=
but
her natural affection.
‘You see again, Miss Summerson,’
observed Mrs Jellyby serenely, ‘what a happiness it is to be so much
occupied as I am and to have this necessity for self-concentration that I h=
ave.
Here is Caddy engaged to a dancing-master's son--mixed up with people who h=
ave
no more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has herself!
This, too, when Mr Quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time, has
mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be interested in her!’=
‘Ma, I always hated and detested Mr Qual=
e!’
sobbed Caddy.
‘Caddy, Caddy!’ returned Mrs Jelly=
by,
opening another letter with the greatest complacency. ‘I have no doubt
you did. How could you do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympath=
ies
with which he overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite chil=
d to
me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty
details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I permit the fil=
m of
a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else) to
interpose between me and the great African continent? No. No,’ repeat=
ed Mrs
Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile, as she opened m=
ore
letters and sorted them. ‘No, indeed.’
I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of
this reception, though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to
say. Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs Jellyby continued to open and sort
letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of voice and wi=
th a
smile of perfect composure, ‘No, indeed.’
‘I hope, Ma,’ sobbed poor Caddy at
last, ‘you are not angry?’
‘Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd gir=
l,’
returned Mrs Jellyby, ‘to ask such questions after what I have said of
the preoccupation of my mind.’
‘And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent
and wish us well?’ said Caddy.
‘You are a nonsensical child to have done
anything of this kind,’ said Mrs Jellyby; ‘and a degenerate chi=
ld,
when you might have devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the s=
tep
is taken, and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, p=
ray,
Caddy,’ said Mrs Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, ‘don't del=
ay
me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before the
afternoon post comes in!’
I thought I could not do better than take my
leave; I was detained for a moment by Caddy's saying, ‘You won't obje=
ct
to my bringing him to see you, Ma?’
‘Oh, dear me, Caddy,’ cried Mrs
Jellyby, who had relapsed into that distant contemplation, ‘have you
begun again? Bring whom?’
‘Him, Ma.’
‘Caddy, Caddy!’ said Mrs Jellyby,
quite weary of such little matters. ‘Then you must bring him some eve=
ning
which is not a Parent Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification
night. You must accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear =
Miss
Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this silly chit.
Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty- eight new letters from
manufacturing families anxious to understand the details of the native and
coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need not apologize for having v=
ery
little leisure.’
I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low
spirits when we went downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by=
her
saying she would far rather have been scolded than treated with such
indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in clothes that
how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't know. I gradually chee=
red
her up by dwelling on the many things she would do for her unfortunate fath=
er
and for Peepy when she had a home of her own; and finally we went downstairs
into the damp dark kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters
were grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play with
them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I was obliged to
fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard loud voices in the
parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent tumbling about of the furnitur=
e.
The last effect I am afraid was caused by poor Mr Jellyby's breaking away f=
rom
the dining-table and making rushes at the window with the intention of thro=
wing
himself into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his
affairs.
As I rode quietly home at night after the day's
bustle, I thought a good deal of Caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my
hopes (in spite of the elder Mr Turveydrop) that she would be the happier a=
nd
better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her and her
husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really was, why that =
was
all for the best too, and who would wish them to be wiser? I did not wish t=
hem
to be any wiser and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him
myself. And I looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers in dista=
nt
countries and the stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and
happy as to be useful to some one in my small way.
They were so glad to see me when I got home, as
they always were, that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had =
not
been a method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from t=
he
lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, and spoke so
cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I suppose there never
was such a fortunate little creature in the world.
We got into such a chatty state that night,
through Ada and my guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, th=
at I
went on prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my =
own
room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I heard a s=
oft
tap at my door. So I said, ‘Come in!’ and there came in a pretty
little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a curtsy.
‘If you please, miss,’ said the li=
ttle
girl in a soft voice, ‘I am Charley.’
‘Why, so you are,’ said I, stooping
down in astonishment and giving her a kiss. ‘How glad am I to see you,
Charley!’
‘If you please, miss,’ pursued Cha=
rley
in the same soft voice, ‘I'm your maid.’
‘Charley?’
‘If you please, miss, I'm a present to y=
ou,
with Mr Jarndyce's love.’
I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck and
looked at Charley.
‘And oh, miss,’ says Charley, clap=
ping
her hands, with the tears starting down her dimpled cheeks, ‘Tom's at
school, if you please, and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs
Blinder, miss, a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at
school--and Emma, she would have been left with Mrs Blinder--and me, I shou=
ld
have been here--all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr Jarndyce thought that Tom =
and
Emma and me had better get a little used to parting first, we was so small.
Don't cry, if you please, miss!’
‘I can't help it, Charley.’
‘No, miss, nor I can't help it,’ s=
ays
Charley. ‘And if you please, miss, Mr Jarndyce's love, and he thinks
you'll like to teach me now and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and m=
e is
to see each other once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss,R=
17;
cried Charley with a heaving heart, ‘and I'll try to be such a good m=
aid!’
‘Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did =
all
this!’
‘No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. =
Nor
yet Emma. It was all you, miss.’
‘I have known nothing of it. It was Mr
Jarndyce, Charley.’
‘Yes, miss, but it was all done for the =
love
of you and that you might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little
present with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom =
was
to be sure to remember it.’
Charley dried her eyes and entered on her
functions, going in her matronly little way about and about the room and
folding up everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
creeping back to my side and said, ‘Oh, don't cry, if you please, mis=
s.’
And I said again, ‘I can't help it, Char=
ley.’
And Charley said again, ‘No, miss, nor I=
can't
help it.’ And so, after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she=
.
As soon as Richard and I had held the conversa=
tion
of which I have given an account, Richard communicated the state of his min=
d to
Mr Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise when =
he
received the representation, though it caused him much uneasiness and
disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted together, late at night =
and
early in the morning, and passed whole days in London, and had innumerable
appointments with Mr Kenge, and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable
business. While they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent
considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head s=
o constantly
that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right place, was as genial
with Ada and me as at any other time, but maintained a steady reserve on th=
ese
matters. And as our utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself
sweeping assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it real=
ly
was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.
We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a
new application was made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an i=
nfant
and a ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of talking,
and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as a vexatious and
capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned and readjourned, and
referred, and reported on, and petitioned about until Richard began to doubt
(as he told us) whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a
veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment was made =
for
him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord
Chancellor very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowi=
ng
his mind--’a pretty good joke, I think,’ said Richard, ‘f=
rom
that quarter!’--and at last it was settled that his application shoul=
d be
granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for an
ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent's; and
Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent course of
military study and got up at five o'clock every morning to practise the
broadsword exercise.
Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succee=
ded
vacation. We sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper=
or
out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken to;=
and
it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a professor's house in
London, was able to be with us less frequently than before; my guardian sti=
ll
maintained the same reserve; and so time passed until the commission was
obtained and Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Irel=
and.
He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one
evening, and had a long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour ela=
psed
before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting =
and
said, ‘Come in, my dears!’ We went in and found Richard, whom we
had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking mortifi=
ed
and angry.
‘Rick and I, Ada,’ said Mr Jarndyc=
e, ‘are
not quite of one mind. Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!’=
;
‘You are very hard with me, sir,’ =
said
Richard. ‘The harder because you have been so considerate to me in all
other respects and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I
never could have been set right without you, sir.’
‘Well, well!’ said Mr Jarndyce. =
8216;I
want to set you more right yet. I want to set you more right with yourself.=
’
‘I hope you will excuse my saying, sir,&=
#8217;
returned Richard in a fiery way, but yet respectfully, ‘that I think =
I am
the best judge about myself.’
‘I hope you will excuse my saying, my de=
ar
Rick,’ observed Mr Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good
humour, ‘that it's quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think
so. I must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; =
and
I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot.’
Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit do=
wn
in his reading- chair and sat beside her.
‘It's nothing, my dear,’ he said, =
‘it's
nothing. Rick and I have only had a friendly difference, which we must stat=
e to
you, for you are the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming.’
‘I am not indeed, cousin John,’
replied Ada with a smile, ‘if it is to come from you.’
‘Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a
minute's calm attention, without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you
likewise. My dear girl,’ putting his hand on hers as it lay on the si=
de
of the easy-chair, ‘you recollect the talk we had, we four when the
little woman told me of a little love affair?’
‘It is not likely that either Richard or=
I
can ever forget your kindness that day, cousin John.’
‘I can never forget it,’ said Rich=
ard.
‘And I can never forget it,’ said =
Ada.
‘So much the easier what I have to say, =
and
so much the easier for us to agree,’ returned my guardian, his face
irradiated by the gentleness and honour of his heart. ‘Ada, my bird, =
you
should know that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All =
that
he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He has
exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he has plante=
d.’
‘Quite true that I have exhausted my pre=
sent
resources, and I am quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty,
sir,’ said Richard, ‘is not all I have.’
‘Rick, Rick!’ cried my guardian wi=
th a
sudden terror in his manner, and in an altered voice, and putting up his ha=
nds
as if he would have stopped his ears. ‘For the love of God, don't fou=
nd a
hope or expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has
haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!=
8217;
We were all startled by the fervour of this
warning. Richard bit his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he
felt, and knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.
‘Ada, my dear,’ said Mr Jarndyce,
recovering his cheerfulness, ‘these are strong words of advice, but I
live in Bleak House and have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard=
had
to start him in the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, f=
or
his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the understanding
that there is no sort of contract between you. I must go further. I will be
plain with you both. You were to confide freely in me, and I will confide
freely in you. I ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but
your relationship.’
‘Better to say at once, sir,’ retu=
rned
Richard, ‘that you renounce all confidence in me and that you advise =
Ada
to do the same.’
‘Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick,
because I don't mean it.’
‘You think I have begun ill, sir,’
retorted Richard. ‘I HAVE, I know.’
‘How I hoped you would begin, and how go=
on,
I told you when we spoke of these things last,’ said Mr Jarndyce in a
cordial and encouraging manner. ‘You have not made that beginning yet,
but there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is
just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young=
, my
dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may come must c=
ome
of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner.’
‘You are very hard with me, sir,’ =
said
Richard. ‘Harder than I could have supposed you would be.’
‘My dear boy,’ said Mr Jarndyce, &=
#8216;I
am harder with myself when I do anything that gives you pain. You have your=
remedy
in your own hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that
there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for =
her,
much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what is best for =
the
other, if not what is best for yourselves.’
‘Why is it best, sir?’ returned
Richard hastily. ‘It was not when we opened our hearts to you. You did
not say so then.’
‘I have had experience since. I don't bl=
ame
you, Rick, but I have had experience since.’
‘You mean of me, sir.’
‘Well! Yes, of both of you,’ said =
Mr
Jarndyce kindly. ‘The time is not come for your standing pledged to o=
ne
another. It is not right, and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young
cousins, begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for =
you
to write your lives in.’
Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said
nothing.
‘I have avoided saying one word to eithe=
r of
you or to Esther,’ said Mr Jarndyce, ‘until now, in order that =
we
might be open as the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advi=
se,
I now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all e=
lse
to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do wrong, =
and
you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you together.’
A long silence succeeded.
‘Cousin Richard,’ said Ada then,
raising her blue eyes tenderly to his face, ‘after what our cousin Jo=
hn
has said, I think no choice is left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about
me, for you will leave me here under his care and will be sure that I can h=
ave
nothing to wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I--I don't
doubt, cousin Richard,’ said Ada, a little confused, ‘that you =
are
very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall in love with anybody el=
se.
But I should like you to consider well about it too, as I should like you t=
o be
in all things very happy. You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at =
all
changeable; but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cou=
sins
may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I
know it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately, and
often talk of you with Esther, and--and perhaps you will sometimes think a
little of me, cousin Richard. So now,’ said Ada, going up to him and
giving him her trembling hand, ‘we are only cousins again, Richard--f=
or
the time perhaps-- and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he
goes!’
It was strange to me that Richard should not be
able to forgive my guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him w=
hich
he himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it was
certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this hour he nev=
er
was as free and open with Mr Jarndyce as he had been before. He had every
reason given him to be so, but he was not; and solely on his side, an
estrangement began to arise between them.
In the business of preparation and equipment he
soon lost himself, and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in
Hertfordshire while he, Mr Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He
remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at such t=
imes
would confide to me the heaviest self- reproaches. But in a few minutes he
would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by which they were both =
to
be made rich and happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.
It was a busy time, and I trotted about with h=
im
all day long, buying a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the
things he would have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothi=
ng.
He was perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and
feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so much =
upon
the encouragement he derived from these conversations that I could never ha=
ve
been tired if I had tried.
There used, in that week, to come backward and
forward to our lodging to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been=
a
cavalry soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing, =
with
whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much about him, not =
only
from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I was purposely in the room wi=
th
my work one morning after breakfast when he came.
‘Good morning, Mr George,’ said my
guardian, who happened to be alone with me. ‘Mr Carstone will be here
directly. Meanwhile, Miss Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit d=
own.’
He sat down, a little disconcerted by my prese=
nce,
I thought, and without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across a=
nd
across his upper lip.
‘You are as punctual as the sun,’ =
said
Mr Jarndyce.
‘Military time, sir,’ he replied. =
‘Force
of habit. A mere habit in me, sir. I am not at all business-like.’
‘Yet you have a large establishment, too=
, I
am told?’ said Mr Jarndyce.
‘Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooti=
ng
gallery, but not much of a one.’
‘And what kind of a shot and what kind o=
f a
swordsman do you make of Mr Carstone?’ said my guardian.
‘Pretty good, sir,’ he replied,
folding his arms upon his broad chest and looking very large. ‘If Mr
Carstone was to give his full mind to it, he would come out very good.̵=
7;
‘But he don't, I suppose?’ said my
guardian.
‘He did at first, sir, but not afterward=
s.
Not his full mind. Perhaps he has something else upon it--some young lady,
perhaps.’ His bright dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.
‘He has not me upon his mind, I assure y=
ou, Mr
George,’ said I, laughing, ‘though you seem to suspect me.̵=
7;
He reddened a little through his brown and mad=
e me
a trooper's bow. ‘No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs.=
8217;
‘Not at all,’ said I. ‘I tak=
e it
as a compliment.’
If he had not looked at me before, he looked a=
t me
now in three or four quick successive glances. ‘I beg your pardon, si=
r,’
he said to my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, ‘but you did =
me
the honour to mention the young lady's name--’
‘Miss Summerson.’
‘Miss Summerson,’ he repeated, and
looked at me again.
‘Do you know the name?’ I asked.
‘No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard=
it.
I thought I had seen you somewhere.’
‘I think not,’ I returned, raising=
my
head from my work to look at him; and there was something so genuine in his
speech and manner that I was glad of the opportunity. ‘I remember fac=
es
very well.’
‘So do I, miss!’ he returned, meet=
ing
my look with the fullness of his dark eyes and broad forehead. ‘Humph!
What set me off, now, upon that!’
His once more reddening through his brown and
being disconcerted by his efforts to remember the association brought my
guardian to his relief.
‘Have you many pupils, Mr George?’=
‘They vary in their number, sir. Mostly
they're but a small lot to live by.’
‘And what classes of chance people come =
to
practise at your gallery?’
‘All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners.
From gentlemen to 'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and =
show
themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of course, but
THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open.’
‘People don't come with grudges and sche=
mes
of finishing their practice with live targets, I hope?’ said my guard=
ian,
smiling.
‘Not much of that, sir, though that
‘I am sorry to say I am.’
‘I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my
time, sir.’
‘A Chancery suitor?’ returned my
guardian. ‘How was that?’
‘Why, the man was so badgered and worried
and tortured by being knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to
post,’ said Mr George, ‘that he got out of sorts. I don't belie=
ve
he had any idea of taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of
resentment and violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire
away till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by an=
d he
had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'If this practice is a
safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't altogether like your bein=
g so
bent upon it in your present state of mind; I'd rather you took to something
else.' I was on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he receive=
d it
in very good part and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sor=
t of
friendship.’
‘What was that man?’ asked my guar=
dian
in a new tone of interest.
‘Why, he began by being a small Shropshi=
re
farmer before they made a baited bull of him,’ said Mr George.
‘Was his name Gridley?’
‘It was, sir.’
Mr George directed another succession of quick
bright glances at me as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surpri=
se
at the coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name. =
He
made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he called m=
y condescension.
‘I don't know,’ he said as he look=
ed
at me, ‘what it is that sets me off again--but--bosh! What's my head
running against!’ He passed one of his heavy hands over his crisp dark
hair as if to sweep the broken thoughts out of his mind and sat a little
forward, with one arm akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a
brown study at the ground.
‘I am sorry to learn that the same state=
of
mind has got this Gridley into new troubles and that he is in hiding,’
said my guardian.
‘So I am told, sir,’ returned Mr
George, still musing and looking on the ground. ‘So I am told.’=
‘You don't know where?’
‘No, sir,’ returned the trooper,
lifting up his eyes and coming out of his reverie. ‘I can't say anyth=
ing
about him. He will be worn out soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's
heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.=
’
Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr
George rose, made me another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a go=
od
day, and strode heavily out of the room.
This was the morning of the day appointed for
Richard's departure. We had no more purchases to make now; I had completed =
all
his packing early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night,
when he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being ag=
ain
expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we should go down=
to
the court and hear what passed. As it was his last day, and he was eager to=
go,
and I had never been there, I gave my consent and we walked down to
Westminster, where the court was then sitting. We beguiled the way with
arrangements concerning the letters that Richard was to write to me and the
letters that I was to write to him and with a great many hopeful projects. =
My
guardian knew where we were going and therefore was not with us.
When we came to the court, there was the Lord
Chancellor--the same whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's
Inn--sitting in great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and sea=
ls
on a red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden,
which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a long row of
solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at their feet; and then t=
here
were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and gowns--some awake and some asleep,
and one talking, and nobody paying much attention to what he said. The Lord
Chancellor leaned back in his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushion=
ed
arm and his forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present do=
zed;
some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups: all see=
med
perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very unconcerned, and
extremely comfortable.
To see everything going on so smoothly and to
think of the roughness of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that fu=
ll
dress and ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery=
it
represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was ragin=
g in
so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year to
year, in such good order and composure; to behold the Lord Chancellor and t=
he
whole array of practitioners under him looking at one another and at the
spectators as if nobody had ever heard that all over England the name in wh=
ich
they were assembled was a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contem=
pt,
and indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little sh=
ort
of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one--this was so curious=
and
self- contradictory to me, who had no experience of it, that it was at first
incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I sat where Richard put me, and
tried to listen, and looked about me; but there seemed to be no reality in =
the
whole scene except poor little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench
and nodding at it.
Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we
sat. She gave me a gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much
gratification and pride, its principal attractions. Mr Kenge also came to s=
peak
to us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the bland
modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a visit, he said; he
would have preferred the first day of term; but it was imposing, it was
imposing.
When we had been there half an hour or so, the
case in progress--if I may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a
connexion--seemed to die out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being =
by
anybody expected to come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw dow=
n a
bundle of papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody sai=
d, ‘Jarndyce
and Jarndyce.’ Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and a general
withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, =
and
bags and bags full of papers.
I think it came on ‘for further directio=
ns’--about
some bill of costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused eno=
ugh.
But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were ‘in i=
t,’
and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I. They chatted
about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and explained among
themselves, and some of them said it was this way, and some of them said it=
was
that way, and some of them jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of
affidavits, and there was more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned
was in a state of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by
anybody. After an hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun =
and
cut short, it was ‘referred back for the present,’ as Mr Kenge
said, and the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
bringing them in.
I glanced at Richard on the termination of the=
se
hopeless proceedings and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome y=
oung
face. ‘It can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!=
217;
was all he said.
I had seen Mr Guppy bringing in papers and
arranging them for Mr Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow,
which rendered me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his
arm and was taking me away when Mr Guppy came up.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Carstone,’ =
said
he in a whisper, ‘and Miss Summerson's also, but there's a lady here,=
a
friend of mine, who knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking ha=
nds.’
As he spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from =
my
remembrance, Mrs Rachael of my godmother's house.
‘How do you do, Esther?’ said she.=
‘Do
you recollect me?’
I gave her my hand and told her yes and that s=
he
was very little altered.
‘I wonder you remember those times, Esth=
er,’
she returned with her old asperity. ‘They are changed now. Well! I am
glad to see you, and glad you are not too proud to know me.’ But inde=
ed
she seemed disappointed that I was not.
‘Proud, Mrs Rachael!’ I remonstrat=
ed.
‘I am married, Esther,’ she return=
ed,
coldly correcting me, ‘and am Mrs Chadband. Well! I wish you good day,
and I hope you'll do well.’
Mr Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs Rachael's way through the confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which = we were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought toget= her. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet in the first ch= ill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw, coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr George. He made nothing of the people a= bout him as he tramped on, staring over their heads into the body of the court.<= o:p>
‘George!’ said Richard as I called=
his
attention to him.
‘You are well met, sir,’ he return=
ed. ‘And
you, miss. Could you point a person out for me, I want? I don't understand
these places.’
Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for=
us,
he stopped when we were out of the press in a corner behind a great red
curtain.
‘There's a little cracked old woman,R=
17;
he began, ‘that--’
I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by
me, having kept beside me all the time and having called the attention of
several of her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion=
) by
whispering in their ears, ‘Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!’
‘Hem!’ said Mr George. ‘You
remember, miss, that we passed some conversation on a certain man this morn=
ing?
Gridley,’ in a low whisper behind his hand.
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘He is hiding at my place. I couldn't
mention it. Hadn't his authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a =
whim
to see her. He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost =
as
good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I sat by
Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the muffled drums.R=
17;
‘Shall I tell her?’ said I.
‘Would you be so good?’ he returned
with a glance of something like apprehension at Miss Flite. ‘It's a
providence I met you, miss; I doubt if I should have known how to get on wi=
th
that lady.’ And he put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a
martial attitude as I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purpor=
t of
his kind errand.
‘My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost=
as
celebrated as myself!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now really! My dear, I w=
ill
wait upon him with the greatest pleasure.’
‘He is living concealed at Mr George's,&=
#8217;
said I. ‘Hush! This is Mr George.’
‘In--deed!’ returned Miss Flite. &=
#8216;Very
proud to have the honour! A military man, my dear. You know, a perfect gene=
ral!’
she whispered to me.
Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so
courtly and polite, as a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so
very often that it was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this
was at last done, and addressing Mr George as ‘General,’ she ga=
ve
him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on,=
he
was so discomposed and begged me so respectfully ‘not to desert him=
8217;
that I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was alw=
ays
tractable with me and as she too said, ‘Fitz Jarndyce, my dear, you w=
ill
accompany us, of course.’ As Richard seemed quite willing, and even
anxious, that we should see them safely to their destination, we agreed to =
do
so. And as Mr George informed us that Gridley's mind had run on Mr Jarndyce=
all
the afternoon after hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a ha=
sty
note in pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr George
sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and we sen=
t it
off by a ticket- porter.
We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to=
the
neighbourhood of Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for
which Mr George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door=
of
which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to the
door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair, wearing spectac=
les,
and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and
carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed him.
‘I ask your pardon, my good friend,̵=
7;
said he, ‘but is this George's Shooting Gallery?’
‘It is, sir,’ returned Mr George,
glancing up at the great letters in which that inscription was painted on t=
he
whitewashed wall.
‘Oh! To be sure!’ said the old
gentleman, following his eyes. ‘Thank you. Have you rung the bell?=
217;
‘My name is George, sir, and I have rung=
the
bell.’
‘Oh, indeed?’ said the old gentlem=
an. ‘Your
name is George? Then I am here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no
doubt?’
‘No, sir. You have the advantage of me.&=
#8217;
‘Oh, indeed?’ said the old gentlem=
an. ‘Then
it was your young man who came for me. I am a physician and was requested--=
five
minutes ago--to come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery.R=
17;
‘The muffled drums,’ said Mr Georg=
e,
turning to Richard and me and gravely shaking his head. ‘It's quite
correct, sir. Will you please to walk in.’
The door being at that moment opened by a very
singular-looking little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and
hands and dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage i=
nto
a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and guns, =
and
swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all arrived here, the
physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared to vanish by magic and =
to
leave another and quite a different man in his place.
‘Now lookee here, George,’ said the
man, turning quickly round upon him and tapping him on the breast with a la=
rge
forefinger. ‘You know me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, =
and
I'm a man of the world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a long time,
and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit.’
Mr George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and
shook his head.
‘Now, George,’ said the other, kee=
ping
close to him, ‘you're a sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's
what YOU are, beyond a doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common
character, because you have served your country and you know that when duty
calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to give troub=
le.
If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what YOU'D do. Phil Squod,
don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like that’--the dirty little=
man
was shuffling about with his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the
intruder, in a manner that looked threatening--’because I know you and
won't have it.’
‘Phil!’ said Mr George.
‘Yes, guv'ner.’
‘Be quiet.’
The little man, with a low growl, stood still.=
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mr
Bucket, ‘you'll excuse anything that may appear to be disagreeable in
this, for my name's Inspector Bucket of the Detective, and I have a duty to
perform. George, I know where my man is because I was on the roof last night
and saw him through the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, y=
ou
know,’ pointing; ‘that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must see=
my
man, and I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,
and you know I don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. You give me y=
our
word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier, mind you, likewise), =
that
it's honourable between us two, and I'll accommodate you to the utmost of my
power.’
‘I give it,’ was the reply. ‘=
;But
it wasn't handsome in you, Mr Bucket.’
‘Gammon, George! Not handsome?’ sa=
id Mr
Bucket, tapping him on his broad breast again and shaking hands with him. &=
#8216;I
don't say it wasn't handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equal=
ly
good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life Guardsma=
n!
Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself, ladies and gentleme=
n.
I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure of a man!’
The affair being brought to this head, Mr Geor=
ge,
after a little consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he
called him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr Bucket agreeing, they went away=
to
the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by a table
covered with guns. Mr Bucket took this opportunity of entering into a little
light conversation, asking me if I were afraid of fire-arms, as most young
ladies were; asking Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which=
he
considered the best of those rifles and what it might be worth first-hand,
telling him in return that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, fo=
r he
was naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and making
himself generally agreeable.
After a time he followed us to the further end=
of
the gallery, and Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr George came
after us. He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would =
take
a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips when the =
bell
was rung and my guardian appeared, ‘on the chance,’ he slightly
observed, ‘of being able to do any little thing for a poor fellow
involved in the same misfortune as himself.’ We all four went back
together and went into the place where Gridley was.
It was a bare room, partitioned off from the
gallery with unpainted wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten
feet high and only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high=
gallery
roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr Bucket had looked dow=
n.
The sun was low--near setting--and its light came redly in above, without
descending to the ground. Upon a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from
Shropshire, dressed much as we had seen him last, but so changed that at fi=
rst
I recognized no likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.
He had been still writing in his hiding-place,=
and
still dwelling on his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves=
were
covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of such toke=
ns.
Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little mad woman were sid=
e by
side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a chair holding his hand, and none =
of
us went close to them.
His voice had faded, with the old expression of
his face, with his strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wro=
ngs
that had at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form=
and
colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from Shropshire whom we=
had
spoken with before.
He inclined his head to Richard and me and spo=
ke
to my guardian.
‘Mr Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to =
come
to see me. I am not long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your h=
and,
sir. You are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you.=
’
They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian sa=
id
some words of comfort to him.
‘It may seem strange to you, sir,’
returned Gridley; ‘I should not have liked to see you if this had bee=
n the
first time of our meeting. But you know I made a fight for it, you know I s=
tood
up with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to =
the
last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so I don't
mind your seeing me, this wreck.’
‘You have been courageous with them many=
and
many a time,’ returned my guardian.
‘Sir, I have been,’ with a faint
smile. ‘I told you what would come of it when I ceased to be so, and =
see
here! Look at us--look at us!’ He drew the hand Miss Flite held throu=
gh
her arm and brought her something nearer to him.
‘This ends it. Of all my old association=
s,
of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this
one poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of
many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on e=
arth
that Chancery has not broken.’
‘Accept my blessing, Gridley,’ said
Miss Flite in tears. ‘Accept my blessing!’
‘I thought, boastfully, that they never
could break my heart, Mr Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I d=
id
believe that I could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they we=
re
until I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have be=
en
wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I hope they m=
ay
never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will lead them to believe t=
hat
I died defying them, consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so ma=
ny
years.’
Here Mr Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by=
the
door, good- naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.
‘Come, come!’ he said from his cor=
ner.
‘Don't go on in that way, Mr Gridley. You are only a little low. We a=
re
all of us a little low sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your
temper with the whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you o=
n a
score of warrants yet, if I have luck.’
He only shook his head.
‘Don't shake your head,’ said Mr
Bucket. ‘Nod it; that's what I want to see you do. Why, Lord bless yo=
ur
soul, what times we have had together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over=
and
over again for contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no
other purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don't you
remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace was sw=
orn
against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old lady there; she h=
as
been always present. Hold up, Mr Gridley, hold up, sir!’
‘What are you going to do about him?R=
17;
asked George in a low voice.
‘I don't know yet,’ said Bucket in=
the
same tone. Then resuming his encouragement, he pursued aloud: ‘Worn o=
ut, Mr
Gridley? After dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the r=
oof
here like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't like bei=
ng
worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You want
excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what YOU want. You're used to =
it,
and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself. Very well, then; here's this
warrant got by Mr Tulkinghorn of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into
half-a-dozen counties since. What do you say to coming along with me, upon =
this
warrant, and having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It'll do =
you
good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn at the
Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your energy talk =
of
giving in. You mustn't do that. You're half the fun of the fair in the Cour=
t of
Chancery. George, you lend Mr Gridley a hand, and let's see now whether he
won't be better up than down.’
‘He is very weak,’ said the troope=
r in
a low voice.
‘Is he?’ returned Bucket anxiously=
. ‘I
only want to rouse him. I don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in l=
ike
this. It would cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little
waxy with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I
shall never take advantage of it.’
The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, w=
hich
still rings in my ears.
‘Oh, no, Gridley!’ she cried as he
fell heavily and calmly back from before her. ‘Not without my blessin=
g.
After so many years!’
The sun was down, the light had gradually stol=
en
from the roof, and the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that
pair, one living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than the
darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I heard=
it
echoed: ‘Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes=
, of
all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to
me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two,
and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!=
217;
There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor
Street. Black suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's
Courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr
Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.
For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields
persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the
chariot of Mr Snagsby's imagination; and Mr Bucket drives; and the passenge=
rs
are Jo and Mr Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the
law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in the litt=
le
front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles away at a smoking
pace from the dinner-table, when Mr Snagsby pauses in carving the first sli=
ce
of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes and stares at the kitchen wall.
Mr Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he =
has
had to do with. Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may =
come
of it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter is=
the
puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the s=
tars
and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr Tulkinghorn's
chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by that best and
closest of his customers, whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and
all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detect=
ive Mr
Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to be ev=
aded
or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some dangerous secret witho=
ut
knowing what it is. And it is the fearful peculiarity of this condition tha=
t,
at any hour of his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull=
of
the bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the
secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr Bucket only knows wh=
om.
For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many men unknown do) and says, ‘Is Mr Snagsby in?= 8217; or words to that innocent effect, Mr Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his gui= lty breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the counter and ask= ing the young dogs what they mean by it and why they can't speak out at once? M= ore impracticable men and boys persist in walking into Mr Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at= the little dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the morning, Mr Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his little woman shaking him and saying ‘What's the matter with the man!’<= o:p>
The little woman herself is not the least item=
in
his difficulty. To know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he
has under all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr Snagsb=
y,
in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who has a reservation
from his master and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye.
These various signs and tokens, marked by the
little woman, are not lost upon her. They impel her to say, ‘Snagsby =
has
something on his mind!’ And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court,
Cursitor Street. From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs Snagsby finds the road as
natural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy =
gets
into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was always lurking
thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs Snagsby's breast, prompting
her to nocturnal examinations of Mr Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals o=
f Mr
Snagsby's letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till,
cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, =
and
a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.
Mrs Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that
the house becomes ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The
'prentices think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Gus=
ter
holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where they were
found floating among the orphans) that there is buried money underneath the
cellar, guarded by an old man with a white beard, who cannot get out for se=
ven
thousand years because he said the Lord's Prayer backwards.
‘Who was Nimrod?’ Mrs Snagsby
repeatedly inquires of herself. ‘Who was that lady--that creature? And
who is that boy?’ Now, Nimrod being as dead as the mighty hunter whose
name Mrs Snagsby has appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she dir=
ects
her mental eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. ̵=
6;And
who,’ quoth Mrs Snagsby for the thousand and first time, ‘is th=
at
boy? Who is that--!’ And there Mrs Snagsby is seized with an inspirat=
ion.
He has no respect for Mr Chadband. No, to be s=
ure,
and he wouldn't have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those contagi=
ous
circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr Chadband--why, Mrs Snagsby
heard it herself with her own ears!--to come back, and be told where he was=
to
go, to be addressed by Mr Chadband; and he never came! Why did he never com=
e?
Because he was told not to come. Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs
Snagsby sees it all.
But happily (and Mrs Snagsby tightly shakes her
head and tightly smiles) that boy was met by Mr Chadband yesterday in the
streets; and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr Chadband desires to
improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was seized by Mr
Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to the police unless he
showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and unless he entered into, and
fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in Cook's Court to-morrow night, ‘=
;to--mor--row--night,’
Mrs Snagsby repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another
tight shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and
to-morrow night Mrs Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some one el=
se;
and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says Mrs Snagsby with
haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind ME!
Mrs Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ear=
s,
but holds her purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the
savoury preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr
Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging vesse=
l is
replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at last, with his
slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his shuffle forward, and his
shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in
his muddy hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught =
and
was plucking before eating raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr Chadban=
d is
to improve.
Mrs Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as =
he
is brought into the little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr Snagsby t=
he
moment he comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr Snagsby? Mr Snagsby looks at
him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs Snagsby sees it all? Why else shou=
ld
that look pass between them, why else should Mr Snagsby be confused and cou=
gh a
signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear as crystal that Mr Snagsby is =
that
boy's father.
‘Peace, my friends,’ says Chadband,
rising and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend visage. ‘Peac=
e be
with us! My friends, why with us? Because,’ with his fat smile, ̵=
6;it
cannot be against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardenin=
g,
because it is softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but co=
mes
home unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My hum=
an
boy, come forward!’
Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr Chadband l=
ays
the same on Jo's arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful =
of
his reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something
practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, ‘You let me
alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone.’
‘No, my young friend,’ says Chadba=
nd
smoothly, ‘I will not let you alone. And why? Because I am a
harvest-labourer, because I am a toiler and a moiler, because you are deliv=
ered
over unto me and are become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friend=
s,
may I so employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your pro=
fit,
to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young friend, sit upon
this stool.’
Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that=
the
reverend gentleman wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms a=
nd
is got into the required position with great difficulty and every possible
manifestation of reluctance.
When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure,=
Mr
Chadband, retiring behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, R=
16;My
friends!’ This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience.
The 'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into a
staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr Chadband=
and
pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches her nearly. Mrs Sna=
gsby
silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs Chadband composes herself grimly by =
the
fire and warms her knees, finding that sensation favourable to the receptio=
n of
eloquence.
It happens that Mr Chadband has a pulpit habit=
of
fixing some member of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his
points with that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be
moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of
inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by some
elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of forfeits
through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpos=
e of
parliamentary cheering and gets Mr Chadband's steam up. From mere force of
habit, Mr Chadband in saying ‘My friends!’ has rested his eye o=
n Mr
Snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already sufficient=
ly
confused, the immediate recipient of his discourse.
‘We have here among us, my friends,̵=
7;
says Chadband, ‘a Gentile and a heathen, a dweller in the tents of
Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on upon the surface of the earth. We have here
among us, my friends,’ and Mr Chadband, untwisting the point with his
dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on Mr Snagsby, signifying that he w=
ill
throw him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down, &=
#8216;a
brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks=
and
herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious stones. Now, my friends, w=
hy
do I say he is devoid of these possessions? Why? Why is he?’ Mr Chadb=
and
states the question as if he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much
ingenuity and merit to Mr Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.
Mr Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious
look he received just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr
Chadband mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly remarking, =
8216;I
don't know, I'm sure, sir.’ On which interruption Mrs Chadband glares=
and
Mrs Snagsby says, ‘For shame!’
‘I hear a voice,’ says Chadband; &=
#8216;is
it a still small voice, my friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so=
--’
‘Ah--h!’ from Mrs Snagsby.
‘Which says, 'I don't know.' Then I will
tell you why. I say this brother present here among us is devoid of parents,
devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver,=
and
of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon so=
me
of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is that light?’=
;
Mr Chadband draws back his head and pauses, bu=
t Mr
Snagsby is not to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr Chadband, leaning
forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly into Mr
Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.
‘It is,’ says Chadband, ‘the=
ray
of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of stars. It is the l=
ight
of Terewth.’
Mr Chadband draws himself up again and looks
triumphantly at Mr Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after
that.
‘Of Terewth,’ says Mr Chadband,
hitting him again. ‘Say not to me that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I=
say
to you it is. I say to you, a million of times over, it is. It is! I say to=
you
that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the l=
ess
you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a speaking-trumpet! I=
say
to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be
bruised, you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.&=
#8217;
The present effect of this flight of oratory--=
much
admired for its general power by Mr Chadband's followers--being not only to
make Mr Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr Snagsb=
y in
the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass and a h=
eart
of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted and is=
in
a very advanced state of low spirits and false position when Mr Chadband
accidentally finishes him.
‘My friends,’ he resumes after dab=
bing
his fat head for some time-- and it smokes to such an extent that he seems =
to
light his pocket- handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--&=
#8217;to
pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let=
us
in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. F=
or,
my young friends,’ suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, to
their consternation, ‘if I am told by the doctor that calomel or
castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is
castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of that before I dose myself with eit=
her
or with both. Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in=
a
spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth--the working clothes--t=
he
every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?’
‘Ah--h!’ from Mrs Snagsby.
‘Is it suppression?’
A shiver in the negative from Mrs Snagsby.
‘Is it reservation?’
A shake of the head from Mrs Snagsby--very long
and very tight.
‘No, my friends, it is neither of these.
Neither of these names belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us-=
-who
is now, my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set
upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should have to
wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for his sake--when =
this
young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock, and of a bull, and of a l=
ady,
and of a sovereign, was THAT the Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it
wholly and entirely? No, my friends, no!’
If Mr Snagsby could withstand his little woman=
's
look as it enters at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the wh=
ole
tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.
‘Or, my juvenile friends,’ says
Chadband, descending to the level of their comprehension with a very obtrus=
ive
demonstration in his greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for
the purpose, ‘if the master of this house was to go forth into the ci=
ty
and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the
mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for I have
seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?’
Mrs Snagsby in tears.
‘Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he=
saw
an elephant, and returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an
eel,' would THAT be Terewth?’
Mrs Snagsby sobbing loudly.
‘Or put it, my juvenile friends,’ =
said
Chadband, stimulated by the sound, ‘that the unnatural parents of this
slumbering heathen--for parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a
doubt--after casting him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild
dogs and the young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings=
and
had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their dancings, and
their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and poultry, would THAT be
Terewth?’
Mrs Snagsby replies by delivering herself a pr=
ey
to spasms, not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that
Cook's Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she =
has
to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After unspeakable
suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by
expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted, in which
state of affairs Mr Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte remova=
l,
and extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the door in
the drawing-room.
All this time Jo has been standing on the spot
where he woke up, ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth=
. He
spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature=
to
be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good HIS trying to keep awake=
, for
HE won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that there is a history =
so
interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, record=
ing
deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing th=
eir
own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, wou=
ld
but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough witho=
ut
their modest aid--it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it ye=
t!
Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers=
and
the Reverend Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk =
for
five minutes. ‘It an't no good my waiting here no longer,’ thin=
ks
Jo. ‘Mr Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night.’ And
downstairs he shuffles.
But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holdi=
ng
by the handrail of the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfu=
lly,
the same having been induced by Mrs Snagsby's screaming. She has her own su=
pper
of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to interchange a =
word
or so for the first time.
‘Here's something to eat, poor boy,̵=
7;
says Guster.
‘Thank'ee, mum,’ says Jo.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Jist!’ says Jo.
‘What's gone of your father and your mot=
her,
eh?’
Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks
petrified. For this orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at
Tooting has patted him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life
that any decent hand has been so laid upon him.
‘I never know'd nothink about 'em,’
says Jo.
‘No more didn't I of mine,’ cries
Guster. She is repressing symptoms favourable to the fit when she seems to =
take
alarm at something and vanishes down the stairs.
‘Jo,’ whispers the law-stationer
softly as the boy lingers on the step.
‘Here I am, Mr Snagsby!’
‘I didn't know you were gone--there's
another half-crown, Jo. It was quite right of you to say nothing about the =
lady
the other night when we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can'=
t be
too quiet, Jo.’
‘I am fly, master!’
And so, good night.
A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, fol=
lows
the law- stationer to the room he came from and glides higher up. And
henceforth he begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow th=
an
his own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his own.=
And
into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may pass, let all
concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs Snagsby is there
too--bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of his shadow.
Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sal=
low
face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants
unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brigh=
test
of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide
awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and
curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names,
false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of
brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen of the green-baize road who co=
uld
discourse from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills;
spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable
fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, a=
nd
false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath their dirty
braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, and more crime than =
is
in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (a=
nd
he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerab=
le
devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, b=
acks
a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about
bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in such for=
m Mr
Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading the tributary channels=
of
Leicester Square.
But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes=
him
not. It wakes Mr George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They aris=
e,
roll up and stow away their mattresses. Mr George, having shaved himself be=
fore
a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and
bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon comes back shining wi=
th
yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he rubs
himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just
come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the m=
ore
he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less
coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he rubs, and puff=
s,
and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more
conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well bent
forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his knees lighting a
fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for him to see all that done,
and sufficient renovation for one day to take in the superfluous health his
master throws off.
When Mr George is dry, he goes to work to brush
his head with two hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil,
shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with
sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr George's toilet is s=
oon
performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, as
his custom is, while Phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee,
prepares breakfast. He smokes gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this
morning's pipe is devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.
‘And so, Phil,’ says George of the
shooting gallery after several turns in silence, ‘you were dreaming of
the country last night?’
Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of
surprise as he scrambled out of bed.
‘Yes, guv'ner.’
‘What was it like?’
‘I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner=
,’
said Phil, considering.
‘How did you know it was the country?=
217;
‘On account of the grass, I think. And t=
he
swans upon it,’ says Phil after further consideration.
‘What were the swans doing on the grass?=
’
‘They was a-eating of it, I expect,̵=
7;
says Phil.
The master resumes his march, and the man resu=
mes
his preparation of breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparatio=
n,
being limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for =
two
and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as
Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the gallery for every object=
he
wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the
circumstances. At length the breakfast is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr Geo=
rge
knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the
chimney corner, and sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil
follows suit, sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and tak=
ing
his plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened hands,=
or
because it is his natural manner of eating.
‘The country,’ says Mr George, ply=
ing
his knife and fork; ‘why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the
country, Phil?’
‘I see the marshes once,’ says Phi=
l,
contentedly eating his breakfast.
‘What marshes?’
‘THE marshes, commander,’ returns
Phil.
‘Where are they?’
‘I don't know where they are,’ says
Phil; ‘but I see 'em, guv'ner. They was flat. And miste.’
Governor and commander are interchangeable ter=
ms
with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to
nobody but Mr George.
‘I was born in the country, Phil.’=
‘Was you indeed, commander?’
‘Yes. And bred there.’
Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after
respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gu=
lp
of coffee, still staring at him.
‘There's not a bird's note that I don't
know,’ says Mr George. ‘Not many an English leaf or berry that I
couldn't name. Not many a tree that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it=
. I
was a real country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country.’
‘She must have been a fine old lady,
guv'ner,’ Phil observes.
‘Aye! And not so old either, five and th=
irty
years ago,’ says Mr George. ‘But I'll wager that at ninety she
would be near as upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders.R=
17;
‘Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?’
inquires Phil.
‘No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bl=
ess
her!’ says the trooper. ‘What set me on about country boys, and
runaways, and good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your
eyes upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?’
Phil shakes his head.
‘Do you want to see it?’
‘N-no, I don't know as I do, particular,=
’
says Phil.
‘The town's enough for you, eh?’
‘Why, you see, commander,’ says Ph=
il, ‘I
ain't acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too o=
ld
to take to novelties.’
‘How old
‘I'm something with a eight in it,’
says Phil. ‘It can't be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, s=
omewheres.’
Mr George, slowly putting down his saucer with=
out
tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, ‘Why, what the deuce,
Phil--’ when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fing=
ers.
‘I was just eight,’ says Phil, =
216;agreeable
to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a err=
and,
and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery
comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my man?' I sa=
ys
'Yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to Clerkenwell together. That =
was
April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come
round again, I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it=
.'
April Fool Day after that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in
it.' In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eig=
ht
in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is how I
always know there's a eight in it.’
‘Ah!’ says Mr George, resuming his
breakfast. ‘And where's the tinker?’
‘Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner,=
and
the hospital put him-- in a glass-case, I HAVE heerd,’ Phil replies
mysteriously.
‘By that means you got promotion? Took t=
he
business, Phil?’
‘Yes, commander, I took the business. Su=
ch
as it was. It wasn't much of a beat--round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden,
Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the
kettles till they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come
and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings. But
they didn't come to me. I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a good song. I
couldn't! He could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it =
was
iron or block tin. I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile
it--never had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and th=
eir
wives complained of me.’
‘They were mighty particular. You would =
pass
muster in a crowd, Phil!’ says the trooper with a pleasant smile.
‘No, guv'ner,’ returns Phil, shaki=
ng
his head. ‘No, I shouldn't. I was passable enough when I went with the
tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire wit=
h my
mouth when I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair of=
f,
and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in the =
way
of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich means, and what with
having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too =
far
gone in drink--which was almost always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, ev=
en
at that time. As to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the
men was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a
gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at the
firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!’
Resigning himself to which condition with a
perfectly satisfied manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee.
While drinking it, he says, ‘It was after the case-filling blow-up wh=
en I
first see you, commander. You remember?’
‘I remember, Phil. You were walking alon=
g in
the sun.’
‘Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--’=
;
‘True, Phil--shouldering your way on--=
8217;
‘In a night-cap!’ exclaims Phil,
excited.
‘In a night-cap--’
‘And hobbling with a couple of sticks!=
8217;
cries Phil, still more excited.
‘With a couple of sticks. When--’<= o:p>
‘When you stops, you know,’ cries
Phil, putting down his cup and saucer and hastily removing his plate from h=
is
knees, ‘and says to me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I
didn't say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a
person so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to su=
ch a
limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it =
out
of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of somethi=
ng
hot, 'What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What's ami=
ss,
old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I
says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more=
to
me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!’ cries Phil, who =
has
started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. ‘If a
mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take a=
im
at me. They can't spoil MY beauty. I'M all right. Come on! If they want a m=
an
to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me well about the head. I don't
mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, Cornwall,
Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em throw me. They won't hurt ME. I have been
throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!’
With this unexpected speech, energetically
delivered and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises
referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery,=
and
abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head,
intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away t=
he
breakfast.
Mr George, after laughing cheerfully and clapp=
ing
him on the shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gal=
lery
into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells, and
afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting ‘too flesh=
y,’
engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil =
has
fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans,
and files, and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and
more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about=
a
gun.
Master and man are at length disturbed by
footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the
arrival of unusual company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the
gallery, bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any
day in the year but the fifth of November.
It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried =
in a
chair by two bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinch=
ed
mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses
commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England up ali=
ve
but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is p=
ut
down. At which point the figure in it gasping, ‘O Lord! Oh, dear me! =
I am
shaken!’ adds, ‘How de do, my dear friend, how de do?’ Mr
George then descries, in the procession, the venerable Mr Smallweed out for=
an
airing, attended by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
‘Mr George, my dear friend,’ says
Grandfather Smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his
bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, ‘how de do? You're
surprised to see me, my dear friend.’
‘I should hardly have been more surprise=
d to
have seen your friend in the city,’ returns Mr George.
‘I am very seldom out,’ pants Mr
Smallweed. ‘I haven't been out for many months. It's inconvenient--an=
d it
comes expensive. But I longed so much to see you, my dear Mr George. How de=
do,
sir?’
‘I am well enough,’ says Mr George=
. ‘I
hope you are the same.’
‘You can't be too well, my dear friend.&=
#8217;
Mr Smallweed takes him by both hands. ‘I have brought my granddaughter
Judy. I couldn't keep her away. She longed so much to see you.’
‘Hum! She bears it calmly!’ mutter=
s Mr
George.
‘So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chai=
r in
it, and just round the corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the ch=
air,
and carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishmen=
t!
This,’ says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has be=
en
in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, ‘=
;is
the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by agreement included in=
his
fare. This person,’ the other bearer, ‘we engaged in the street
outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopen=
ce.
I was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we
needn't have employed this person.’
Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a gl=
ance
of considerable terror and a half-subdued ‘O Lord! Oh, dear me!’
Nor in his apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap before, h=
as
stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air of a dead shot in=
tent
on picking Mr Smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species.
‘Judy, my child,’ says Grandfather
Smallweed, ‘give the person his twopence. It's a great deal for what =
he
has done.’
The person, who is one of those extraordinary
specimens of human fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western stree=
ts
of London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a ‘mission’=
for
holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but
transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and retir=
es.
‘My dear Mr George,’ says Grandfat=
her
Smallweed, ‘would you be so kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am
accustomed to a fire, and I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!=
8217;
His closing exclamation is jerked out of the
venerable gentleman by the suddenness with which Mr Squod, like a genie,
catches him up, chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
‘O Lord!’ says Mr Smallweed, panti=
ng. ‘Oh,
dear me! Oh, my stars! My dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very
prompt. O Lord, he is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being
scorched in the legs,’ which indeed is testified to the noses of all
present by the smell of his worsted stockings.
The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather=
a
little way from the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having
released his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr Smallw=
eed
again says, ‘Oh, dear me! O Lord!’ and looking about and meetin=
g Mr
George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
‘My dear friend! So happy in this meetin=
g!
And this is your establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You
never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear friend=
?’
adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
‘No, no. No fear of that.’
‘And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he
never lets anything off without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?’=
‘He has never hurt anybody but himself,&=
#8217;
says Mr George, smiling.
‘But he might, you know. He seems to have
hurt himself a good deal, and he might hurt somebody else,’ the old
gentleman returns. ‘He mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr George,
will you order him to leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?’=
;
Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retir=
es,
empty-handed, to the other end of the gallery. Mr Smallweed, reassured, fal=
ls
to rubbing his legs.
‘And you're doing well, Mr George?’=
; he
says to the trooper, squarely standing faced about towards him with his
broadsword in his hand. ‘You are prospering, please the Powers?’=
;
Mr George answers with a cool nod, adding, =
216;Go
on. You have not come to say that, I know.’
‘You are so sprightly, Mr George,’
returns the venerable grandfather. ‘You are such good company.’=
‘Ha ha! Go on!’ says Mr George.
‘My dear friend! But that sword looks aw=
ful
gleaming and sharp. It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver,=
Mr
George. Curse him!’ says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as=
the
trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. ‘He owes me money, =
and
might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I wish your
brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head off.’
Mr George, returning, folds his arms, and look=
ing
down at the old man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says
quietly, ‘Now for it!’
‘Ho!’ cries Mr Smallweed, rubbing =
his
hands with an artful chuckle. ‘Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear
friend?’
‘For a pipe,’ says Mr George, who =
with
great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from t=
he
grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr Smallweed,
who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he
becomes exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiven=
ess
expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr George. As
the excellent old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean=
and
veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he
continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a
shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustom=
ed
eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than
the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him in dive=
rs
parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of
self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters
enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
When Judy has by these means set him up again =
in
his chair, with a white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she
stretches out her weazen forefinger and gives Mr George one poke in the bac=
k.
The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed
grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the f=
ire.
‘Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!’
chatters Grandfather Smallweed, swallowing his rage. ‘My dear friend!=
’
(still clawing).
‘I tell you what,’ says Mr George.=
‘If
you want to converse with me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, a=
nd I
can't go about and about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enoug=
h.
It don't suit me. When you go winding round and round me,’ says the
trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again, ‘damme, if I don't =
feel
as if I was being smothered!’
And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost
extent as if to assure himself that he is not smothered yet.
‘If you have come to give me a friendly
call,’ continues Mr George, ‘I am obliged to you; how are you? =
If
you have come to see whether there's any property on the premises, look abo=
ut
you; you are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!’=
;
The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze f=
rom
the fire, gives her grandfather one ghostly poke.
‘You see! It's her opinion too. And why =
the
devil that young woman won't sit down like a Christian,’ says Mr Geor=
ge
with his eyes musingly fixed on Judy, ‘I can't comprehend.’
‘She keeps at my side to attend to me, s=
ir,’
says Grandfather Smallweed. ‘I am an old man, my dear Mr George, and I
need some attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot=
’
(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), ‘but I need
attention, my dear friend.’
‘Well!’ returns the trooper, wheel=
ing
his chair to face the old man. ‘Now then?’
‘My friend in the city, Mr George, has d=
one
a little business with a pupil of yours.’
‘Has he?’ says Mr George. ‘I=
am
sorry to hear it.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Grandfather Smallweed =
rubs
his legs. ‘He is a fine young soldier now, Mr George, by the name of
Carstone. Friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable.’ ̵=
6;Did
they?’ returns Mr George. ‘Do you think your friend in the city
would like a piece of advice?’
‘I think he would, my dear friend. From =
you.’
‘I advise him, then, to do no more busin=
ess
in that quarter. There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my
knowledge, is brought to a dead halt.’
‘No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr Geor=
ge.
No, no, no, sir,’ remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbi=
ng
his spare legs. ‘Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends,=
and
he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commiss=
ion,
and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance i=
n a
wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr George, I think my friend would consider the
young gentleman good for something yet?’ says Grandfather Smallweed,
turning up his velvet cap and scratching his ear like a monkey.
Mr George, who has put aside his pipe and sits
with an arm on his chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right =
foot
as if he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
taken.
‘But to pass from one subject to another=
,’
resumes Mr Smallweed. ‘'To promote the conversation,' as a joker might
say. To pass, Mr George, from the ensign to the captain.’
‘What are you up to, now?’ asks Mr
George, pausing with a frown in stroking the recollection of his moustache.=
‘What
captain?’
‘Our captain. The captain we know of.
Captain Hawdon.’
‘Oh! That's it, is it?’ says Mr Ge=
orge
with a low whistle as he sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking ha=
rd
at him. ‘You are there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smother=
ed
any more. Speak!’
‘My dear friend,’ returns the old =
man,
‘I was applied--Judy, shake me up a little!--I was applied to yesterd=
ay
about the captain, and my opinion still is that the captain is not dead.=
217;
‘Bosh!’ observes Mr George.
‘What was your remark, my dear friend?=
8217;
inquires the old man with his hand to his ear.
‘Bosh!’
‘Ho!’ says Grandfather Smallweed. =
‘Mr
George, of my opinion you can judge for yourself according to the questions
asked of me and the reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the
lawyer making the inquiries wants?’
‘A job,’ says Mr George.
‘Nothing of the kind!’
‘Can't be a lawyer, then,’ says Mr
George, folding his arms with an air of confirmed resolution.
‘My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a
famous one. He wants to see some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He d=
on't
want to keep it. He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in h=
is
possession.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, Mr George. Happening to remember =
the
advertisement concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be g=
iven
respecting him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my dear
friend. WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have miss=
ed
forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!’
‘Well, Mr Smallweed?’ says Mr Geor=
ge
again after going through the ceremony with some stiffness.
‘I had no such thing. I have nothing but=
his
signature. Plague pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon
him,’ says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembra=
nces
of a prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, ‘=
;I
have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,’ breathlessly
recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re- adjusts the cap on his
skittle-ball of a head, ‘you, my dear Mr George, are likely to have s=
ome
letter or paper that would suit the purpose. Anything would suit the purpos=
e,
written in the hand.’
‘Some writing in that hand,’ says =
the
trooper, pondering; ‘may be, I have.’
‘My dearest friend!’
‘May be, I have not.’
‘Ho!’ says Grandfather Smallweed,
crest-fallen.
‘But if I had bushels of it, I would not
show as much as would make a cartridge without knowing why.’
‘Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr
George, I have told you why.’
‘Not enough,’ says the trooper,
shaking his head. ‘I must know more, and approve it.’
‘Then, will you come to the lawyer? My d=
ear
friend, will you come and see the gentleman?’ urges Grandfather Small=
weed,
pulling out a lean old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. =
‘I
told him it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this
forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come and see the gentleman,=
Mr
George?’
‘Hum!’ says he gravely. ‘I d=
on't
mind that. Though why this should concern you so much, I don't know.’=
‘Everything concerns me that has a chanc=
e in
it of bringing anything to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn'=
t he
owe us immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him conc=
ern
more than me? Not, my dear friend,’ says Grandfather Smallweed, lower=
ing
his tone, ‘that I want YOU to betray anything. Far from it. Are you r=
eady
to come, my dear friend?’
‘Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise n=
othing,
you know.’
‘No, my dear Mr George; no.’
‘And you mean to say you're going to giv=
e me
a lift to this place, wherever it is, without charging for it?’ Mr Ge=
orge
inquires, getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
This pleasantry so tickles Mr Smallweed that he
laughs, long and low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances
over his paralytic shoulder at Mr George and eagerly watches him as he unlo=
cks
the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the gallery, looks h=
ere
and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately takes something out with a
rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr
Smallweed once, and Mr Smallweed pokes Judy once.
‘I am ready,’ says the trooper, co=
ming
back. ‘Phil, you can carry this old gentleman to his coach, and make
nothing of him.’
‘Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!R=
17;
says Mr Smallweed. ‘He's so very prompt! Are you sure you can do it
carefully, my worthy man?’
Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and=
its
load, sidles away, tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr Smallweed, and b=
olts
along the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old
gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however, terminating at
the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy takes her place beside hi=
m,
and the chair embellishes the roof, and Mr George takes the vacant place up=
on
the box.
Mr George is quite confounded by the spectacle=
he
beholds from time to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind
him, where the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with h=
is
cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and looking
upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression of being jolt=
ed
in the back.
Mr George has not far to ride with folded arms
upon the box, for their destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver
stops his horses, Mr George alights, and looking in at the window, says, =
8216;What,
Mr Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?’
‘Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr
George?’
‘Why, I have heard of him--seen him too,=
I
think. But I don't know him, and he don't know me.’
There ensues the carrying of Mr Smallweed
upstairs, which is done to perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne =
into
Mr Tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the fire=
. Mr
Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be back directly. =
The
occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus much, stirs the fire and
leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.
Mr George is mightily curious in respect of the
room. He looks up at the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books,
contemplates the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on t=
he
boxes.
‘'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'‘=
; Mr
George reads thoughtfully. ‘Ha! 'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!’=
; Mr
George stands looking at these boxes a long while--as if they were
pictures--and comes back to the fire repeating, ‘Sir Leicester Dedloc=
k,
Baronet, and Manor of Chesney Wold, hey?’
‘Worth a mint of money, Mr George!’
whispers Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs. ‘Powerfully rich!=
8217;
‘Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or=
the
Baronet?’
‘This gentleman, this gentleman.’<= o:p>
‘So I have heard; and knows a thing or t=
wo,
I'll hold a wager. Not bad quarters, either,’ says Mr George, looking
round again. ‘See the strong-box yonder!’
This reply is cut short by Mr Tulkinghorn's
arrival. There is no change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his
spectacles in his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, clo=
se
and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitua=
lly
not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have warmer
worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr Tulkinghorn, after all, if
everything were known.
‘Good morning, Mr Smallweed, good mornin=
g!’
he says as he comes in. ‘You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit do=
wn,
sergeant.’
As Mr Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts
them in his hat, he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the
trooper stands and says within himself perchance, ‘You'll do, my frie=
nd!’
‘Sit down, sergeant,’ he repeats a=
s he
comes to his table, which is set on one side of the fire, and takes his
easy-chair. ‘Cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!’ Mr
Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of h=
is
hands and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio
sitting in a little semicircle before him.
‘Now, I can feel what I am about’ =
(as
perhaps he can in two senses), ‘Mr Smallweed.’ The old gentlema=
n is
newly shaken up by Judy to bear his part in the conversation. ‘You ha=
ve
brought our good friend the sergeant, I see.’
‘Yes, sir,’ returns Mr Smallweed, =
very
servile to the lawyer's wealth and influence.
‘And what does the sergeant say about th=
is
business?’
‘Mr George,’ says Grandfather
Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his shrivelled hand, ‘this is the
gentleman, sir.’
Mr George salutes the gentleman but otherwise =
sits
bolt upright and profoundly silent--very forward in his chair, as if the fu=
ll
complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
Mr Tulkinghorn proceeds, ‘Well, George--I
believe your name is George?’
‘It is so, Sir.’
‘What do you say, George?’
‘I ask your pardon, sir,’ returns =
the
trooper, ‘but I should wish to know what YOU say?’
‘Do you mean in point of reward?’<= o:p>
‘I mean in point of everything, sir.R=
17;
This is so very trying to Mr Smallweed's temper
that he suddenly breaks out with ‘You're a brimstone beast!’ an=
d as
suddenly asks pardon of Mr Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of t=
he
tongue by saying to Judy, ‘I was thinking of your grandmother, my dea=
r.’
‘I supposed, sergeant,’ Mr Tulking=
horn
resumes as he leans on one side of his chair and crosses his legs, ‘t=
hat Mr
Smallweed might have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smal=
lest
compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his
attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rathe=
r in
his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?’
‘Yes, sir, that is so,’ says Mr Ge=
orge
with military brevity.
‘Therefore you may happen to have in your
possession something-- anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions,
orders, a letter, anything--in Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare =
his
writing with some that I have. If you can give me the opportunity, you shal=
l be
rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, five, guineas, you would consider
handsome, I dare say.’
‘Noble, my dear friend!’ cries
Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his eyes.
‘If not, say how much more, in your
conscience as a soldier, you can demand. There is no need for you to part w=
ith
the writing, against your inclination--though I should prefer to have it.=
8217;
Mr George sits squared in exactly the same
attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascibl=
e Mr
Smallweed scratches the air.
‘The question is,’ says Mr Tulking=
horn
in his methodical, subdued, uninterested way, ‘first, whether you have
any of Captain Hawdon's writing?’
‘First, whether I have any of Captain
Hawdon's writing, sir,’ repeats Mr George.
‘Secondly, what will satisfy you for the
trouble of producing it?’
‘Secondly, what will satisfy me for the
trouble of producing it, sir,’ repeats Mr George.
‘Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whe=
ther
it is at all like that,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him so=
me
sheets of written paper tied together.
‘Whether it is at all like that, sir. Ju=
st
so,’ repeats Mr George.
All three repetitions Mr George pronounces in a
mechanical manner, looking straight at Mr Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much =
as
glance at the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him
for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to
look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
‘Well?’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ̵=
6;What
do you say?’
‘Well, sir,’ replies Mr George, ri=
sing
erect and looking immense, ‘I would rather, if you'll excuse me, have
nothing to do with this.’
Mr Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed,
demands, ‘Why not?’
‘Why, sir,’ returns the trooper. &=
#8216;Except
on military compulsion, I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am wh=
at
they call in Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can
stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr
Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of this kin=
d I
feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my sensation,’ says Mr
George, looking round upon the company, ‘at the present moment.’=
;
With that, he takes three strides forward to
replace the papers on the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resu=
me
his former station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the
ground and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to
prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
Under this provocation, Mr Smallweed's favouri=
te
adjective of disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the wor=
ds ‘my
dear friend’ with the monosyllable ‘brim,’ thus converting
the possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in h=
is
speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear friend in t=
he
tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so eminent a gentleman
requires, and to do it with a good grace, confident that it must be
unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr Tulkinghorn merely utters an
occasional sentence, as, ‘You are the best judge of your own interest,
sergeant.’ ‘Take care you do no harm by this.’ ‘Ple=
ase
yourself, please yourself.’ ‘If you know what you mean, that's
quite enough.’ These he utters with an appearance of perfect indiffer=
ence
as he looks over the papers on his table and prepares to write a letter.
Mr George looks distrustfully from the painted
ceiling to the ground, from the ground to Mr Smallweed, from Mr Smallweed t=
o Mr
Tulkinghorn, and from Mr Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again, often in=
his
perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.
‘I do assure you, sir,’ says Mr Ge=
orge,
‘not to say it offensively, that between you and Mr Smallweed here, I
really am being smothered fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a ma=
tch
for you gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain=
's
hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?’
Mr Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. ‘= ;No. If you were a man of business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed = that there are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of doing a= ny injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that.’<= o:p>
‘Aye! He is dead, sir.’
‘IS he?’ Mr Tulkinghorn quietly si=
ts
down to write.
‘Well, sir,’ says the trooper, loo=
king
into his hat after another disconcerted pause, ‘I am sorry not to have
given you more satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one tha=
t I
should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing to do w=
ith
this by a friend of mine who has a better head for business than I have, and
who is an old soldier, I am willing to consult with him. I--I really am so
completely smothered myself at present,’ says Mr George, passing his =
hand
hopelessly across his brow, ‘that I don't know but what it might be a=
satisfaction
to me.’
Mr Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an
old soldier, so strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking
counsel with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of
five guineas or more, that Mr George engages to go and see him. Mr Tulkingh=
orn
says nothing either way.
‘I'll consult my friend, then, by your
leave, sir,’ says the trooper, ‘and I'll take the liberty of
looking in again with the final answer in the course of the day. Mr Smallwe=
ed,
if you wish to be carried downstairs--’
‘In a moment, my dear friend, in a momen=
t.
Will you first let me speak half a word with this gentleman in private?R=
17;
‘Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on=
my
account.’ The trooper retires to a distant part of the room and resum=
es
his curious inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.
‘If I wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby,
sir,’ whispers Grandfather Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his
level by the lapel of his coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire o=
ut
of his angry eyes, ‘I'd tear the writing away from him. He's got it
buttoned in his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there.
Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking- stick shop, and say =
you
saw him put it there!’
This vehement conjuration the old gentleman
accompanies with such a thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for=
his
strength, and he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr Tulkinghorn with h=
im,
until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.
‘Violence will not do for me, my friend,=
’
Mr Tulkinghorn then remarks coolly.
‘No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's
chafing and galling--it's-- it's worse than your smattering chattering magp=
ie
of a grandmother,’ to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the f=
ire,
‘to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. He, not to gi=
ve
it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the most, he has
only his own way for a little while. I have him periodically in a vice. I'll
twist him, sir. I'll screw him, sir. If he won't do it with a good grace, I=
'll
make him do it with a bad one, sir! Now, my dear Mr George,’ says
Grandfather Smallweed, winking at the lawyer hideously as he releases him, =
‘I
am ready for your kind assistance, my excellent friend!’
Mr Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of
amusement manifesting itself through his self-possession, stands on the
hearth-rug with his back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr
Smallweed and acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight no=
d.
It is more difficult to get rid of the old
gentleman, Mr George finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs,=
for
when he is replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of
the guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button --having, in
truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him--that some degree =
of
force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a separation. It is
accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in quest of his adviser.
By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars
(there, not without a glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be
something in his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr
George sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that
ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the bridges of
London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost his castle formed o=
f a
thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron monster than he, ready to ch=
op
him into mince-meat any day he dares. To one of the little shops in this
street, which is a musician's shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and
some Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated sc=
raps
of music, Mr George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces f=
rom
it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts tucked up, =
come
forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub commence a-whisking and
a-splashing on the margin of the pavement, Mr George says to himself, ̵=
6;She's
as usual, washing greens. I never saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, wh=
en
she wasn't washing greens!’
The subject of this reflection is at all event=
s so
occupied in washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr
George's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when she h=
as
poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing near her. Her
reception of him is not flattering.
‘George, I never see you but I wish you =
was
a hundred mile away!’
The trooper, without remarking on this welcome,
follows into the musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of
greens upon the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms u=
pon
it.
‘I never,’ she says, ‘George,
consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute when you're near him. You are that
restless and that roving--’
‘Yes! I know I am, Mrs Bagnet. I know I =
am.’
‘You know you are!’ says Mrs Bagne=
t. ‘What's
the use of that? WHY are you?’
‘The nature of the animal, I suppose,=
217;
returns the trooper good- humouredly.
‘Ah!’ cries Mrs Bagnet, something
shrilly. ‘But what satisfaction will the nature of the animal be to me
when the animal shall have tempted my Mat away from the musical business to=
New
Zealand or Australey?’
Mrs Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman.
Rather large- boned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun =
and
wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, =
and
bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from forty-five =
to
fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed (though substantially) that
the only article of ornament of which she stands possessed appear's to be h=
er
wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was=
put
on that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs Bagnet's
dust.
‘Mrs Bagnet,’ says the trooper, =
8216;I
am on my parole with you. Mat will get no harm from me. You may trust me so
far.’
‘Well, I think I may. But the very looks=
of
you are unsettling,’ Mrs Bagnet rejoins. ‘Ah, George, George! I=
f you
had only settled down and married Joe Pouch's widow when he died in North
America, SHE'D have combed your hair for you.’
‘It was a chance for me, certainly,̵=
7;
returns the trooper half laughingly, half seriously, ‘but I shall nev=
er
settle down into a respectable man now. Joe Pouch's widow might have done me
good-- there was something in her, and something of her--but I couldn't mak=
e up
my mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat found!=
’
Mrs Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be
under little reserve with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sor=
t of
fellow herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr Geo=
rge
in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the little room
behind the shop.
‘Why, Quebec, my poppet,’ says Geo=
rge,
following, on invitation, into that department. ‘And little Malta, to=
o!
Come and kiss your Bluffy!’
These young ladies--not supposed to have been
actually christened by the names applied to them, though always so called in
the family from the places of their birth in barracks--are respectively
employed on three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in
learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine perhap=
s)
in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail Mr George with
acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing and romping plant their
stools beside him.
‘And how's young Woolwich?’ says Mr
George.
‘Ah! There now!’ cries Mrs Bagnet,
turning about from her saucepans (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright
flush on her face. ‘Would you believe it? Got an engagement at the
theayter, with his father, to play the fife in a military piece.’
‘Well done, my godson!’ cries Mr
George, slapping his thigh.
‘I believe you!’ says Mrs Bagnet. =
‘He's
a Briton. That's what Woolwich is. A Briton!’
‘And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and
you're respectable civilians one and all,’ says Mr George. ‘Fam=
ily
people. Children growing up. Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old fat=
her
somewhere else, corresponded with, and helped a little, and--well, well! To=
be
sure, I don't know why I shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I have
not much to do with all this!’
Mr George is becoming thoughtful, sitting befo=
re
the fire in the whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack sm=
ell
and contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or dus=
t in
it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots and pannikins
upon the dresser shelves--Mr George is becoming thoughtful, sitting here wh=
ile Mrs
Bagnet is busy, when Mr Bagnet and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr
Bagnet is an ex- artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and
whiskers like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a tor=
rid
complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all unlike the
tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed there may be general=
ly
observed in him an unbending, unyielding, brass-bound air, as if he were
himself the bassoon of the human orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and
model of a young drummer.
Both father and son salute the trooper heartil=
y.
He saying, in due season, that he has come to advise with Mr Bagnet, Mr Bag=
net
hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after dinner and
that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without first partaking of
boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to this invitation, he and Mr
Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic preparations, go forth to take a turn=
up
and down the little street, which they promenade with measured tread and fo=
lded
arms, as if it were a rampart.
‘George,’ says Mr Bagnet. ‘Y=
ou
know me. It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own t=
o it
before her. Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her
mind. Then we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do--do it!’
‘I intend to, Mat,’ replies the ot=
her.
‘I would sooner take her opinion than that of a college.’
‘College,’ returns Mr Bagnet in sh=
ort
sentences, bassoon-like. ‘What college could you leave--in another
quarter of the world-- with nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to ma=
ke
its way home to Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!=
217;
‘You are right,’ says Mr George.
‘What college,’ pursues Bagnet, =
8216;could
you set up in life--with two penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller=
's
earth--a ha'porth of sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in mo=
ney?
That's what the old girl started on. In the present business.’
‘I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Ma=
t.’
‘The old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet,
acquiescing, ‘saves. Has a stocking somewhere. With money in it. I ne=
ver
saw it. But I know she's got it. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then
she'll set you up.’
‘She is a treasure!’ exclaims Mr
George.
‘She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old girl sa= id it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility; try the bassoon. T= he old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got another, get a living by it!’<= o:p>
George remarks that she looks as fresh as a ro=
se
and as sound as an apple.
‘The old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet in
reply, ‘is a thoroughly fine woman. Consequently she is like a thorou=
ghly
fine day. Gets finer as she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I
never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained!’
Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters,
they walk up and down the little street, keeping step and time, until summo=
ned
by Quebec and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs
Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the distribution of
these comestibles, as in every other household duty, Mrs Bagnet developes an
exact system, sitting with every dish before her, allotting to every portio=
n of
pork its own portion of pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and
serving it out complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and
thus supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs Bagnet proceeds to
satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the mess, if
the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly composed of utensils =
of
horn and tin that have done duty in several parts of the world. Young
Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is of the oyster kind, with the addi=
tional
feature of a strong shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetit=
e of
that young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the compl=
ete
round of foreign service.
The dinner done, Mrs Bagnet, assisted by the
younger branches (who polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks),
makes all the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all
away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr Bagnet and the visitor =
may
not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household cares involve
much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard and considerable use o=
f a
pail, which is finally so happy as to assist in the ablutions of Mrs Bagnet
herself. That old girl reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down=
to
her needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be consid=
ered
as entirely off her mind--Mr Bagnet requests the trooper to state his case.=
This Mr George does with great discretion,
appearing to address himself to Mr Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the =
old
girl all the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies her=
self
with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr Bagnet resorts to his standa=
rd
artifice for the maintenance of discipline.
‘That's the whole of it, is it, George?&=
#8217;
says he.
‘That's the whole of it.’
‘You act according to my opinion?’=
‘I shall be guided,’ replies Georg=
e, ‘entirely
by it.’
‘Old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet, ‘=
;give
him my opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is.’
It is that he cannot have too little to do with
people who are too deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference w=
ith
matters he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the
dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put =
his
foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is Mr Bagnet's opinio=
n,
as delivered through the old girl, and it so relieves Mr George's mind by
confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts that he composes himsel=
f to
smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old
times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of
experience.
Through these means it comes to pass that Mr
George does not again rise to his full height in that parlour until the tim=
e is
drawing on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the
theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr George, in his domestic
character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and insinuate a
sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with felicitations on his
success in life, it is dark when Mr George again turns his face towards
Lincoln's Inn Fields.
‘A family home,’ he ruminates as he
marches along, ‘however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely.=
But
it's well I never made that evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been f=
it
for it. I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I
couldn't hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit o=
r if
I didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobo=
dy;
that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!’
So he whistles it off and marches on.
Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr
Tulkinghorn's stair, he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, =
but
the trooper not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark
besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a bell-ha=
ndle
or to open the door for himself, when Mr Tulkinghorn comes up the stairs
(quietly, of course) and angrily asks, ‘Who is that? What are you doi=
ng
there?’
‘I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The
sergeant.’
‘And couldn't George, the sergeant, see =
that
my door was locked?’
‘Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I
didn't,’ says the trooper, rather nettled.
‘Have you changed your mind? Or are you =
in
the same mind?’ Mr Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a
glance.
‘In the same mind, sir.’
‘I thought so. That's sufficient. You can
go. So you are the man,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, opening his door with t=
he
key, ‘in whose hiding-place Mr Gridley was found?’
‘Yes, I AM the man,’ says the troo=
per,
stopping two or three stairs down. ‘What then, sir?’
‘What then? I don't like your associates.
You should not have seen the inside of my door this morning if I had though=
t of
your being that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow.=
8217;
With these words, spoken in an unusually high =
tone
for him, the lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering
noise.
Mr George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon,
the greater because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of
all and evidently applies them to him. ‘A pretty character to bear,=
8217;
the trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. ‘A
threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!’ And looking up, he sees the
clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp. This so
intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill humour. But he
whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home to the shooting gall=
ery.
Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for =
the
time being, of the family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than =
in a
figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in Lincolnshire;
but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds, and the cold and damp
steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended, and eke into Sir Leicester's
bones. The blazing fires of faggot and coal--Dedlock timber and antediluvian
forest--that blaze upon the broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on =
the
frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the
enemy. The hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the
cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to supply the
fires' deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Leicester's need. Hence the fashiona=
ble
intelligence proclaims one morning to the listening earth that Lady Dedlock=
is
expected shortly to return to town for a few weeks.
It is a melancholy truth that even great men h=
ave
their poor relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair shar=
e of
poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality, like
inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be heard. Sir
Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many murders in the res=
pect
that they ‘will out.’ Among whom there are cousins who are so p=
oor
that one might almost dare to think it would have been the happier for them
never to have been plated links upon the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have
been made of common iron at first and done base service.
Service, however (with a few limited reservati=
ons,
genteel but not profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity.=
So
they visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live =
but
shabbily when they can't, and find--the women no husbands, and the men no
wives--and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of
their own making, and so go through high life. The rich family sum has been
divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody kno=
ws
what to do with.
Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of t=
he
question and of his way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or l=
ess.
From my Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir Leices=
ter,
like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of relationship. But while he=
is
stately in the cousinship of the Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man,
according to his dignified way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the
present time, in despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such
cousins at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.
Of these, foremost in the front rank stands
Volumnia Dedlock, a young lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, hav=
ing
the honour to be a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great
family. Miss Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting
ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar in the
Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country houses, passed=
the
twenty years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently
agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date and being considered to bore man=
kind
by her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath, whe=
re
she lives slenderly on an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she
makes occasional resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She ha=
s an
extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs=
and
nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary city. But she is a
little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of an indiscreet profusion in the
article of rouge and persistency in an obsolete pearl necklace like a rosar=
y of
little bird's-eggs.
In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia
would be a clear case for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get h=
er
on it, and when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name =
would
be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow
discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the times when=
it
could be done, and this was the first clear indication Sir Leicester Dedlock
had conveyed to him that the country was going to pieces.
There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, =
who
can make warm mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better
shot than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly desirous=
to
serve his country in a post of good emoluments, unaccompanied by any troubl=
e or
responsibility. In a well- regulated body politic this natural desire on the
part of a spirited young gentleman so highly connected would be speedily
recognized, but somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were=
not
times in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the
second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the country
was going to pieces.
The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlem=
en of
various ages and capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely=
to
have done well enough in life if they could have overcome their cousinship;=
as
it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and lounge in purposeless
and listless paths, and seem to be quite as much at a loss how to dispose of
themselves as anybody else can be how to dispose of them.
In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock
reigns supreme. Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little
world (for the world of fashion does not stretch
Such the guests in the long drawing-room at
Chesney Wold this dismal night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible
here, however) might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold.=
It
is near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house, raising
ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom candlesticks bristle =
on
the distant table by the door, and cousins yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the
piano, cousins at the soda-water tray, cousins rising from the card-table,
cousins gathered round the fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar f=
ire
(for there are two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad heart=
h,
my Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins, in a
luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with magnificent
displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
‘I occasionally meet on my staircase her=
e,’
drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, a=
fter
a long evening of very desultory talk, ‘one of the prettiest girls, I
think, that I ever saw in my life.’
‘A PROTEGEE of my Lady's,’ observes
Sir Leicester.
‘I thought so. I felt sure that some
uncommon eye must have picked that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly
sort of beauty perhaps,’ says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, =
‘but
in its way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!’
Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of
displeasure at the rouge, appears to say so too.
‘Indeed,’ remarks my Lady languidl=
y, ‘if
there is any uncommon eye in the case, it is Mrs Rouncewell's, and not mine.
Rosa is her discovery.’
‘Your maid, I suppose?’
‘No. My anything;
pet--secretary--messenger--I don't know what.’
‘You like to have her about you, as you
would like to have a flower, or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle--no, not a
poodle, though--or anything else that was equally pretty?’ says Volum=
nia,
sympathizing. ‘Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old
soul Mrs Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is =
as
active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!’
Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting
that the housekeeper of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart f=
rom
that, he has a real regard for Mrs Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised=
. So
he says, ‘You are right, Volumnia,’ which Volumnia is extremely
glad to hear.
‘She has no daughter of her own, has she=
?’
‘Mrs Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a
son. Indeed, she had two.’
My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has b=
een
sadly aggravated by Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the
candlesticks and heaves a noiseless sigh.
‘And it is a remarkable example of the
confusion into which the present age has fallen; of the obliteration of
landmarks, the opening of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions,=
217;
says Sir Leicester with stately gloom, ‘that I have been informed by =
Mr
Tulkinghorn that Mrs Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliamen=
t.’
Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.
‘Yes, indeed,’ repeats Sir Leicest=
er. ‘Into
Parliament.’
‘I never heard of such a thing! Good
gracious, what is the man?’ exclaims Volumnia.
‘He is called, I believe--an--ironmaster=
.’
Sir Leicester says it slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure =
but
that he is called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other =
word
expressive of some other relationship to some other metal.
Volumnia utters another little scream.
‘He has declined the proposal, if my
information from Mr Tulkinghorn be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr
Tulkinghorn being always correct and exact; still that does not,’ says
Sir Leicester, ‘that does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught wi=
th
strange considerations--startling considerations, as it appears to me.̵=
7;
Miss Volumnia rising with a look
candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester politely performs the grand tour of the
drawing-room, brings one, and lights it at my Lady's shaded lamp.
‘I must beg you, my Lady,’ he says
while doing so, ‘to remain a few moments, for this individual of whom=
I
speak arrived this evening shortly before dinner and requested in a very
becoming note’--Sir Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwe=
lls
upon it--’I am bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed no=
te,
the favour of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of =
this
young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to- night, I replied th=
at
we would see him before retiring.’
Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes
flight, wishing her hosts--O Lud!--well rid of the--what is it?--ironmaster=
!
The other cousins soon disperse, to the last
cousin there. Sir Leicester rings the bell, ‘Make my compliments to Mr
Rouncewell, in the housekeeper's apartments, and say I can receive him now.=
’
My Lady, who has heard all this with slight
attention outwardly, looks towards Mr Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a li=
ttle
over fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear voic=
e, a
broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd though op=
en
face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman dressed in black, portly enough,
but strong and active. Has a perfectly natural and easy air and is not in t=
he
least embarrassed by the great presence into which he comes.
‘Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I ha=
ve
already apologized for intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very br=
ief.
I thank you, Sir Leicester.’
The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a
sofa between himself and my Lady. Mr Rouncewell quietly takes his seat ther=
e.
‘In these busy times, when so many great
undertakings are in progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so
many places that we are always on the flight.’
Sir Leicester is content enough that the
ironmaster should feel that there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient
house, rooted in that quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time =
to
mature, and the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep =
in
the fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the terra=
ce
has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much the property =
of
every Dedlock--while he lasted-- as the house and lands. Sir Leicester sits
down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose and that of Chesney Wold to the
restless flights of ironmasters.
‘Lady Dedlock has been so kind,’
proceeds Mr Rouncewell with a respectful glance and a bow that way, ‘=
as
to place near her a young beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has falle=
n in
love with Rosa and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her an=
d to
their becoming engaged if she will take him--which I suppose she will. I ha=
ve
never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence in my son's good
sense--even in love. I find her what he represents her, to the best of my
judgment; and my mother speaks of her with great commendation.’
‘She in all respects deserves it,’
says my Lady.
‘I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say =
so,
and I need not comment on the value to me of your kind opinion of her.̵=
7;
‘That,’ observes Sir Leicester with
unspeakable grandeur, for he thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, ̵=
6;must
be quite unnecessary.’
‘Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, =
my
son is a very young man, and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, =
so
my son must make his; and his being married at present is out of the questi=
on.
But supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty girl=
, if
this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a piece of candour =
to
say at once--I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, you will understand=
and
excuse me--I should make it a condition that she did not remain at Chesney
Wold. Therefore, before communicating further with my son, I take the liber=
ty
of saying that if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or
objectionable, I will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time=
and
leave it precisely where it is.’
Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a conditio=
n!
All Sir Leicester's old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in =
the
iron districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower u=
pon
his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his whiskers, actually
stirs with indignation.
‘Am I to understand, sir,’ says Sir
Leicester, ‘and is my Lady to understand’--he brings her in thus
specially, first as a point of gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, =
having
great reliance on her sense--’am I to understand, Mr Rouncewell, and =
is
my Lady to understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for
Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?’
‘Certainly not, Sir Leicester,’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Sir Leices=
ter
very lofty indeed.
‘Pray, Mr Rouncewell,’ says my Lad=
y,
warning Sir Leicester off with the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as=
if
he were a fly, ‘explain to me what you mean.’
‘Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothi=
ng I
could desire more.’
Addressing her composed face, whose intelligen=
ce,
however, is too quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassivene=
ss,
however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture of
resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention, occasionally
slightly bending her head.
‘I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady
Dedlock, and passed my childhood about this house. My mother has lived here
half a century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those examp=
les--perhaps
as good a one as there is--of love, and attachment, and fidelity in such a
nation, which England may well be proud of, but of which no order can
appropriate the whole pride or the whole merit, because such an instance
bespeaks high worth on two sides--on the great side assuredly, on the small=
one
no less assuredly.’ Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid
down in this way, but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though
silently, admits the justice of the ironmaster's proposition.
‘Pardon me for saying what is so obvious,
but I wouldn't have it hastily supposed,’ with the least turn of his =
eyes
towards Sir Leicester, ‘that I am ashamed of my mother's position her=
e,
or wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family. I certainly=
may
have desired--I certainly have desired, Lady Dedlock --that my mother should
retire after so many years and end her days with me. But as I have found th=
at
to sever this strong bond would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned
that idea.’
Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the no=
tion
of Mrs Rouncewell being spirited off from her natural home to end her days =
with
an ironmaster.
‘I have been,’ proceeds the visito=
r in
a modest, clear way, ‘an apprentice and a workman. I have lived on
workman's wages, years and years, and beyond a certain point have had to
educate myself. My wife was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up. We
have three daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being
fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had ourselves=
, we
have educated them well, very well. It has been one of our great cares and
pleasures to make them worthy of any station.’
A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone her=
e,
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 fal=
len
in love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once worke=
d in
a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first very possibly. It=
may
be that he had other views for his son. However, the chances are that having
ascertained the young woman to be of unblemished character, he will say to =
his
son, 'I must be quite sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter
for both of you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,' =
or
it may be, 'I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters for
such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour to see her =
only
so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she has so far profited by
her advantages as that you may be upon a fair equality, you are both in the
same mind, I will do my part to make you happy.' I know of several cases su=
ch
as I describe, my Lady, and I think they indicate to me my own course now.&=
#8217;
Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly,=
but
terribly.
‘Mr Rouncewell,’ says Sir Leicester
with his right hand in the breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in
which he is painted in the gallery, ‘do you draw a parallel between
Chesney Wold and a--’ Here he resists a disposition to choke, ‘a
factory?’
‘I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that t=
he
two places are very different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a
parallel may be justly drawn between them.’
Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down=
one
side of the long drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that h=
e is
awake.
‘Are you aware, sir, that this young wom=
an
whom my Lady--my Lady-- has placed near her person was brought up at the
village school outside the gates?’
‘Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A
very good school it is, and handsomely supported by this family.’
‘Then, Mr Rouncewell,’ returns Sir
Leicester, ‘the application of what you have said is, to me,
incomprehensible.’
‘Will it be more comprehensible, Sir
Leicester, if I say,’ the ironmaster is reddening a little, ‘th=
at I
do not regard the village school as teaching everything desirable to be kno=
wn
by my son's wife?’
From the village school of Chesney Wold, intac=
t as
it is this minute, to the whole framework of society; from the whole framew=
ork
of society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in
consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not) not min=
ding
their catechism, and getting out of the station unto which they are
called--necessarily and for ever, according to Sir Leicester's rapid logic,=
the
first station in which they happen to find themselves; and from that, to th=
eir
educating other people out of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the
landmarks, and opening the floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the
swift progress of the Dedlock mind.
‘My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, =
for
one moment!’ She has given a faint indication of intending to speak. =
‘Mr
Rouncewell, our views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of
education, and our views of--in short,
The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an
opportunity, but she says nothing. He then rises and replies, ‘Sir
Leicester and Lady Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and on=
ly
to observe that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his pres=
ent
inclinations. Good night!’
‘Mr Rouncewell,’ says Sir Leicester
with all the nature of a gentleman shining in him, ‘it is late, and t=
he
roads are dark. I hope your time is not so precious but that you will allow=
my
Lady and myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to- night=
at
least.’
‘I hope so,’ adds my Lady.
‘I am much obliged to you, but I have to
travel all night in order to reach a distant part of the country punctually=
at
an appointed time in the morning.’
Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, =
Sir
Leicester ringing the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.
When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down
thoughtfully by the fire, and inattentive to the Ghost's Walk, looks at Ros=
a,
writing in an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her.
‘Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. A=
re
you in love?’
‘Oh! My Lady!’
My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing
face, says smiling, ‘Who is it? Is it Mrs Rouncewell's grandson?̵=
7;
‘Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don't
know that I am in love with him--yet.’
‘Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know
that he loves YOU, yet?’
‘I think he likes me a little, my Lady.&=
#8217;
And Rosa bursts into tears.
Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the villa=
ge
beauty, smoothing her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her =
with
eyes so full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!
‘Listen to me, child. You are young and
true, and I believe you are attached to me.’
‘Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is
nothing in the world I wouldn't do to show how much.’
‘And I don't think you would wish to lea=
ve
me just yet, Rosa, even for a lover?’
‘No, my Lady! Oh, no!’ Rosa looks =
up
for the first time, quite frightened at the thought.
‘Confide in me, my child. Don't fear me.=
I
wish you to be happy, and will make you so--if I can make anybody happy on =
this
earth.’
Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and
kisses her hand. My Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and
standing with her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between h=
er
own two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa sof=
tly
withdraws; but still my Lady's eyes are on the fire.
In search of what? Of any hand that is no more=
, of
any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her
life? Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it mo=
st
resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's feet, ever
coming on--on--on? Some melancholy influence is upon her, or why should so
proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate?
Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins=
are
scattered before dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear fr=
om
Sir Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and openi=
ng
of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through=
Mrs
Rouncewell's son. Not a cousin of the batch but is really indignant, and
connects it with the feebleness of William Buffy when in office, and really
does feel deprived of a stake in the country--or the pension list--or
something--by fraud and wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great
staircase by Sir Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a
general rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl
necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets--for it is one
appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find it to
keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets--the cousins disperse to t=
he
four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that blows to-day shakes a sh=
ower
from the trees near the deserted house, as if all the cousins had been chan=
ged
into leaves.
Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled in=
to
great scrolls in corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in
brown holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock
ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the house t=
he
leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead
lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener sweep and sweep the tur=
f as
he will, and press the leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still =
they
lie ankle- deep. Howls the shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain
beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenue=
s,
veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds=
. On
all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a little churc=
h,
though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and buried Dedlocks walk t=
here
in the long nights and leave the flavour of their graves behind them.
But the house in town, which is rarely in the =
same
mind as Chesney Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or
mourning when it mourns, expecting when a Dedlock dies--the house in town s=
hines
out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as delicately
redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter as hothouse flowers
can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp
burning of the fires alone disturb the stillness in the rooms, it seems to =
wrap
those chilled bones of Sir Leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir
Leicester is glad to repose in dignified contentment before the great fire =
in
the library, condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring t=
he
fine arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient and
modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally condescends=
to
become a master, which would be best catalogued like the miscellaneous arti=
cles
in a sale. As ‘Three high-backed chairs, a table and cover, long-neck=
ed
bottle (containing wine), one flask, one Spanish female's costume,
three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg the model, and a suit of armour
containing Don Quixote.’ Or ‘One stone terrace (cracked), one
gondola in distance, one Venetian senator's dress complete, richly embroide=
red
white satin costume with profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimi=
tar
superbly mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very
rare), and Othello.’
Mr Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, th=
ere
being estate business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my La=
dy
pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as indifferent, and =
take
as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it may be that my Lady fears th=
is Mr
Tulkinghorn and that he knows it. It may be that he pursues her doggedly and
steadily, with no touch of compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her
beauty and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the
greater zest for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in i=
t.
Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made his dut=
y,
whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined to have nothing hidden
from him in ground where he has burrowed among secrets all his life, whethe=
r he
in his heart despises the splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether =
he
is always treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorge=
ous
clients--whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my Lady =
had
better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful
vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth
and his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees.
Sir Leicester sits in my Lady's room--that roo=
m in
which Mr Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce-- particul=
arly
complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her screen in
her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because he has found in =
his
newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly on the floodgates and the
framework of society. They apply so happily to the late case that Sir Leice=
ster
has come from the library to my Lady's room expressly to read them aloud. &=
#8216;The
man who wrote this article,’ he observes by way of preface, nodding at
the fire as if he were nodding down at the man from a mount, ‘has a
well-balanced mind.’
The man's mind is not so well balanced but tha= t he bores my Lady, who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite unconscious, reads on through h= is double eye-glass, occasionally stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as ‘Very true indeed,’ ‘Very properly put,̵= 7; ‘I have frequently made the same remark myself,’ invariably losing his p= lace after each observation, and going up and down the column to find it again.<= o:p>
Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity=
and
state when the door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
announcement, ‘The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy.’
Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a kil=
ling
voice, ‘The young man of the name of Guppy?’
Looking round, he beholds the young man of the
name of Guppy, much discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter=
of
introduction in his manner and appearance.
‘Pray,’ says Sir Leicester to Merc=
ury,
‘what do you mean by announcing with this abruptness a young man of t=
he
name of Guppy?’
‘I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my
Lady said she would see the young man whenever he called. I was not aware t=
hat
you were here, Sir Leicester.’
With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful =
and
indignant look at the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, =
8216;What
do you come calling here for and getting ME into a row?’
‘It's quite right. I gave him those dire=
ctions,’
says my Lady. ‘Let the young man wait.’
‘By no means, my Lady. Since he has your
orders to come, I will not interrupt you.’ Sir Leicester in his galla=
ntry
retires, rather declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out=
and
majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive appearance.
Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor =
when
the servant has left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot.=
She
suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
‘That your ladyship would have the kindn=
ess
to oblige me with a little conversation,’ returns Mr Guppy, embarrass=
ed.
‘You are, of course, the person who has
written me so many letters?’
‘Several, your ladyship. Several before =
your
ladyship condescended to favour me with an answer.’
‘And could you not take the same means of
rendering a Conversation unnecessary? Can you not still?’
Mr Guppy screws his mouth into a silent ‘=
;No!’
and shakes his head.
‘You have been strangely importunate. If=
it
should appear, after all, that what you have to say does not concern me--an=
d I
don't know how it can, and don't expect that it will--you will allow me to =
cut
you short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you please=
.’
My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, t=
urns
herself towards the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young m=
an
of the name of Guppy.
‘With your ladyship's permission, then,&=
#8217;
says the young man, ‘I will now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I
told your ladyship in my first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have
learnt the habit of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did n=
ot
mention to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and=
in
which my standing--and I may add income--is tolerably good. I may now state=
to
your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm is Kenge and Carbo=
y,
of Lincoln's Inn, which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in
connexion with the case in Chancery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.’
My Lady's figure begins to be expressive of so=
me
attention. She has ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were
listening.
‘Now, I may say to your ladyship at once=
,’
says Mr Guppy, a little emboldened, ‘it is no matter arising out of
Jarndyce and Jarndyce that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, w=
hich
conduct I have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive--in fact, al=
most
blackguardly.’
After waiting for a moment to receive some
assurance to the contrary, and not receiving any, Mr Guppy proceeds, ‘=
;If
it had been Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your
ladyship's solicitor, Mr Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of
being acquainted with Mr Tulkinghorn--at least we move when we meet one
another--and if it had been any business of that sort, I should have gone to
him.’
My Lady turns a little round and says, ‘=
You
had better sit down.’
‘Thank your ladyship.’ Mr Guppy do=
es
so. ‘Now, your ladyship’-- Mr Guppy refers to a little slip of
paper on which he has made small notes of his line of argument and which se=
ems
to involve him in the densest obscurity whenever he looks at it--’I--=
Oh,
yes!--I place myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. If your ladyship wa=
s to
make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr Tulkinghorn of the present
visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation. That, I openly
admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship's honour.’
My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand
that holds the screen, assures him of his being worth no complaint from her=
.
‘Thank your ladyship,’ says Mr Gup=
py; ‘quite
satisfactory. Now-- I--dash it!--The fact is that I put down a head or two =
here
of the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they're written
short, and I can't quite make out what they mean. If your ladyship will exc=
use
me taking it to the window half a moment, I--’
Mr Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a =
pair
of love-birds, to whom he says in his confusion, ‘I beg your pardon, =
I am
sure.’ This does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He
murmurs, growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his
eyes, now a long way off, ‘C.S. What's C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I know!
Yes, to be sure!’ And comes back enlightened.
‘I am not aware,’ says Mr Guppy,
standing midway between my Lady and his chair, ‘whether your ladyship
ever happened to hear of, or to see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther
Summerson.’
My Lady's eyes look at him full. ‘I saw a
young lady of that name not long ago. This past autumn.’
‘Now, did it strike your ladyship that s=
he
was like anybody?’ asks Mr Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head=
on
one side, and scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
‘No.’
‘Not like your ladyship's family?’=
‘No.’
‘I think your ladyship,’ says Mr
Guppy, ‘can hardly remember Miss Summerson's face?’
‘I remember the young lady very well. Wh=
at
has this to do with me?’
‘Your ladyship, I do assure you that hav=
ing
Miss Summerson's image imprinted on my 'eart--which I mention in confidence=
--I
found, when I had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of Chesn=
ey
Wold while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend, such=
a
resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's own portrait =
that
it completely knocked me over, so much so that I didn't at the moment even =
know
what it WAS that knocked me over. And now I have the honour of beholding yo=
ur
ladyship near (I have often, since that, taken the liberty of looking at yo=
ur
ladyship in your carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of=
me,
but I never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than I
thought it.’
Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been
times, when ladies lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants wit=
hin
call, when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute's
purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at this mom=
ent.
My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen a=
s a
fan, asks him again what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do
with her.
‘Your ladyship,’ replies Mr Guppy,
again referring to his paper, ‘I am coming to that. Dash these notes!=
Oh!
'Mrs Chadband.' Yes.’ Mr Guppy draws his chair a little forward and s=
eats
himself again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trif=
le
less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady g=
aze.
‘A--stop a minute, though!’ Mr Guppy refers again. ‘E.S.
twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.’
Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument =
to
point his speech with, Mr Guppy proceeds.
‘Your ladyship, there is a mystery about
Miss Esther Summerson's birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact
because--which I mention in confidence--I know it in the way of my professi=
on
at Kenge and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, M=
iss
Summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. If I could clear this mystery f=
or
her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honour to be =
a remote
branch of your ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in Jarn=
dyce
and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to lo=
ok
with an eye of more dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly d=
one
as yet. In fact, as yet she hasn't favoured them at all.’
A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's
face.
‘Now, it's a very singular circumstance,
your ladyship,’ says Mr Guppy, ‘though one of those circumstanc=
es
that do fall in the way of us professional men--which I may call myself, for
though not admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by
Kenge and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little
income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy--that I have encountered =
the
person who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up bef=
ore Mr
Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.=
8217;
Is the dead colour on my Lady's face reflected
from the screen which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her ra=
ised
hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fall=
en
on her?
‘Did your ladyship,’ says Mr Guppy=
, ‘ever
happen to hear of Miss Barbary?’
‘I don't know. I think so. Yes.’
‘Was Miss Barbary at all connected with =
your
ladyship's family?’
My Lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. S=
he
shakes her head.
‘NOT connected?’ says Mr Guppy. =
8216;Oh!
Not to your ladyship's knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.’ Af=
ter
each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head. ‘Very good!
Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely close--seems to have been extraordinar=
ily
close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather
given to conversation--and my witness never had an idea whether she possess=
ed a
single relative. On one occasion, and only one, she seems to have been
confidential to my witness on a single point, and she then told her that the
little girl's real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.’=
‘My God!’
Mr Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him
looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same
attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, h=
er
brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness
return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees =
her
lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself
back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so
quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed aw=
ay
like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in
tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
‘Your ladyship is acquainted with the na=
me
of Hawdon?’
‘I have heard it before.’
‘Name of any collateral or remote branch=
of
your ladyship's family?’
‘No.’
‘Now, your ladyship,’ says Mr Gupp=
y, ‘I
come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up. It's going =
on,
and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must
know--if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know already--that t=
here
was found dead at the house of a person named Krook, near Chancery Lane, so=
me
time ago, a law-writer in great distress. Upon which law-writer there was an
inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being
unknown. But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-
writer's name was Hawdon.’
‘And what is THAT to me?’
‘Aye, your ladyship, that's the question!
Now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that man's death. A lady
started up, a disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene =
of
action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing- sweeping boy to
show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in
corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any time.=
217;
The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she
does NOT wish to have him produced.
‘Oh, I assure your ladyship it's a very
queer start indeed,’ says Mr Guppy. ‘If you was to hear him tell
about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, y=
ou'd
think it quite romantic.’
There are diamonds glittering on the hand that
holds the screen. My Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter mo=
re,
again with that expression which in other times might have been so dangerou=
s to
the young man of the name of Guppy.
‘It was supposed, your ladyship, that he
left no rag or scrap behind him by which he could be possibly identified. B=
ut he
did. He left a bundle of old letters.’
The screen still goes, as before. All this time
her eyes never once release him.
‘They were taken and secreted. And to-mo=
rrow
night, your ladyship, they will come into my possession.’
‘Still I ask you, what is this to me?=
217;
‘Your ladyship, I conclude with that.=
217;
Mr Guppy rises. ‘If you think there's enough in this chain of
circumstances put together-- in the undoubted strong likeness of this young
lady to your ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having b=
een
brought up by Miss Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson's real n=
ame
to be Hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in
Hawdon's dying as he did--to give your ladyship a family interest in going
further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don't know what th=
ey
are, except that they are old letters: I have never had them in my possessi=
on
yet. I will bring those papers here as soon as I get them and go over them =
for
the first time with your ladyship. I have told your ladyship my object. I h=
ave
told your ladyship that I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation=
if
any complaint was made, and all is in strict confidence.’
Is this the full purpose of the young man of t=
he
name of Guppy, or has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, bread=
th,
depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they
hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he can look=
at
the table and keep that witness-box face of his from telling anything.
‘You may bring the letters,’ says =
my
Lady, ‘if you choose.’
‘Your ladyship is not very encouraging, =
upon
my word and honour,’ says Mr Guppy, a little injured. ‘You may
bring the letters,’ she repeats in the same tone, ‘if you --ple=
ase.’
‘It shall be done. I wish your ladyship =
good
day.’
On a table near her is a rich bauble of a cask=
et,
barred and clasped like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, tak=
es
it to her and unlocks it.
‘Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not
actuated by any motives of that sort,’ says Mr Guppy, ‘and I
couldn't accept anything of the kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am
much obliged to you all the same.’
So the young man makes his bow and goes
downstairs, where the supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called
upon to leave his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes
over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him, not =
to
say to make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the
very portraits frown, the very armour stir?
No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and ai=
r is
so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be
uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint
vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going
upward from a wild figure on its knees.
‘O my child, my child! Not dead in the f=
irst
hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her,=
after
she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!’
Richard had been gone away some time when a
visitor came to pass a few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs
Woodcourt, who, having come from Wales to stay with Mrs Bayham Badger and
having written to my guardian, ‘by her son Allan's desire,’ to
report that she had heard from him and that he was well ‘and sent his
kind remembrances to all of us,’ had been invited by my guardian to m=
ake
a visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took very
kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that sometimes she
almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew very well, to be
uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt it was unreasonable;
still, with all I could do, I could not quite help it.
She was such a sharp little lady and used to s=
it
with her hands folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talk=
ed
to me that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being=
so
upright and trim, though I don't think it was that, because I thought that
quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general expression of her face,
which was very sparkling and pretty for an old lady. I don't know what it w=
as.
Or at least if I do now, I thought I did not then. Or at least--but it don't
matter.
Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, s=
he
would invite me into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great cha=
ir;
and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I was quite lo=
w-
spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from Crumlinwallinwer and the
Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right names, which I dare say they are
not), and would become quite fiery with the sentiments they expressed. Thou=
gh I
never knew what they were (being in Welsh), further than that they were hig=
hly
eulogistic of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.
‘So, Miss Summerson,’ she would sa=
y to
me with stately triumph, ‘this, you see, is the fortune inherited by =
my
son. Wherever my son goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not =
have
money, but he always has what is much better--family, my dear.’
I had my doubts of their caring so very much f=
or
Morgan ap-Kerrig in India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I
used to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected.
‘It IS, my dear, a great thing,’ M=
rs
Woodcourt would reply. ‘It has its disadvantages; my son's choice of a
wife, for instance, is limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the roy=
al
family is limited in much the same manner.’
Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my
dress, as much as to assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the dista=
nce
between us notwithstanding.
‘Poor Mr Woodcourt, my dear,’ she
would say, and always with some emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she ha=
d a
very affectionate heart, ‘was descended from a great Highland family,=
the
MacCoorts of MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the
Royal Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last
representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he will set
them up again and unite them with another old family.’
It was in vain for me to try to change the
subject, as I used to try, only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because-=
-but
I need not be so particular. Mrs Woodcourt never would let me change it.
‘My dear,’ she said one night, =
216;you
have so much sense and you look at the world in a quiet manner so superior =
to
your time of life that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these fam=
ily
matters of mine. You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enoug=
h of
him, I dare say, to recollect him?’
‘Yes, ma'am. I recollect him.’
‘Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you=
are
a judge of character, and I should like to have your opinion of him.’=
‘Oh, Mrs Woodcourt,’ said I, ̵=
6;that
is so difficult!’
‘Why is it so difficult, my dear?’=
she
returned. ‘I don't see it myself.’
‘To give an opinion--’
‘On so slight an acquaintance, my dear.
THAT'S true.’
I didn't mean that, because Mr Woodcourt had b=
een
at our house a good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my
guardian. I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his
profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss Flite =
were
above all praise.
‘You do him justice!’ said Mrs
Woodcourt, pressing my hand. ‘You define him exactly. Allan is a dear
fellow, and in his profession faultless. I say it, though I am his mother.
Still, I must confess he is not without faults, love.’
‘None of us are,’ said I.
‘Ah! But his really are faults that he m=
ight
correct, and ought to correct,’ returned the sharp old lady, sharply
shaking her head. ‘I am so much attached to you that I may confide in
you, my dear, as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness
itself.’
I said I should have thought it hardly possible
that he could have been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealo=
us
in the pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.
‘You are right again, my dear,’ the
old lady retorted, ‘but I don't refer to his profession, look you.=
217;
‘Oh!’ said I.
‘No,’ said she. ‘I refer, my
dear, to his social conduct. He is always paying trivial attentions to young
ladies, and always has been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he h=
as
never really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to=
do
any harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still, it's=
not
right, you know; is it?’
‘No,’ said I, as she seemed to wait
for me.
‘And it might lead to mistaken notions, =
you
see, my dear.’
I supposed it might.
‘Therefore, I have told him many times t=
hat
he really should be more careful, both in justice to himself and in justice=
to
others. And he has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better =
than
anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm--in short, mean nothing.' Al=
l of
which is very true, my dear, but is no justification. However, as he is now
gone so far away and for an indefinite time, and as he will have good
opportunities and introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And yo=
u,
my dear,’ said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, ‘=
regarding
your dear self, my love?’
‘Me, Mrs Woodcourt?’
‘Not to be always selfish, talking of my
son, who has gone to seek his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean =
to
seek YOUR fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now=
you
blush!’
I don't think I did blush--at all events, it w=
as
not important if I did--and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me
and I had no wish to change it.
‘Shall I tell you what I always think of=
you
and the fortune yet to come for you, my love?’ said Mrs Woodcourt.
‘If you believe you are a good prophet,&=
#8217;
said I.
‘Why, then, it is that you will marry so=
me
one very rich and very worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--=
than
yourself. And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very hap=
py.’
‘That is a good fortune,’ said I. =
‘But
why is it to be mine?’
‘My dear,’ she returned, ‘th=
ere's
suitability in it--you are so busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated
altogether that there's suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And
nobody, my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage th=
an I
shall.’
It was curious that this should make me
uncomfortable, but I think it did. I know it did. It made me for some part =
of
that night uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like =
to
confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I would =
have
given anything not to have been so much in the bright old lady's confidence=
if
I could have possibly declined it. It gave me the most inconsistent opinion=
s of
her. At one time I thought she was a story-teller, and at another time that=
she
was the pink of truth. Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next mome=
nt I
believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And af=
ter
all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could not I,
going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and
accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least as well as to anybody
else, and not trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me? Impe=
lled
towards her, as I certainly was, for I was very anxious that she should lik=
e me
and was very glad indeed that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with
actual distress and pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over
again in twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our hou=
se,
and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was better and
safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else? These were
perplexities and contradictions that I could not account for. At least, if I
could--but I shall come to all that by and by, and it is mere idleness to g=
o on
about it now.
So when Mrs Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to
lose her but was relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy
brought such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.=
First Caddy declared (and would at first decla=
re
nothing else) that I was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet
said, was no news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then C=
addy
told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada and I w=
ould
be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the world. To be sure, this
was news indeed; and I thought we never should have done talking about it, =
we
had so much to say to Caddy, and Caddy had so much to say to us.
It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got
over his bankruptcy--’gone through the Gazette,’ was the expres=
sion
Caddy used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and commisera=
tion
of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in some blessed manner wit=
hout
succeeding in understanding them, and had given up everything he possessed
(which was not worth much, I should think, to judge from the state of the
furniture), and had satisfied every one concerned that he could do no more,
poor man. So, he had been honourably dismissed to ‘the office’ =
to
begin the world again. What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said =
he
was a ‘custom-house and general agent,’ and the only thing I ev=
er
understood about that business was that when he wanted money more than usua=
l he
went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found it.
As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind=
by
becoming this shorn lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Ha=
tton
Garden (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting t=
he
horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves with it),
Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr Turveydrop; and po=
or Mr
Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had deferred to Mr Turveydrop's deport=
ment
so submissively that they had become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr
Turveydrop, thus familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had work=
ed
up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being
near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple commenc=
ing
housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they would.
‘And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?&=
#8217;
‘Oh! Poor Pa,’ said Caddy, ‘=
only
cried and said he hoped we might get on better than he and Ma had got on. He
didn't say so before Prince, he only said so to me. And he said, 'My poor g=
irl,
you have not been very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but
unless you mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murd=
er
him than marry him--if you really love him.'‘
‘And how did you reassure him, Caddy?=
217;
‘Why, it was very distressing, you know,=
to
see poor Pa so low and hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't he=
lp
crying myself. But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that=
I hoped
our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in of an
evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better daughter to him th=
ere
than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming to stay with me, and then Pa
began to cry again and said the children were Indians.’
‘Indians, Caddy?’
‘Yes,’ said Caddy, ‘wild
Indians. And Pa said’--here she began to sob, poor girl, not at all l=
ike
the happiest girl in the world-- ‘that he was sensible the best thing
that could happen to them was their being all tomahawked together.’
Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know =
that
Mr Jellyby did not mean these destructive sentiments.
‘No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like h=
is
family to be weltering in their blood,’ said Caddy, ‘but he mea=
ns
that they are very unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very
unfortunate in being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it see=
ms
unnatural to say so.’
I asked Caddy if Mrs Jellyby knew that her
wedding-day was fixed.
‘Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther,’=
she
returned. ‘It's impossible to say whether she knows it or not. She has
been told it often enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a pla=
cid
look, as if I was I don't know what--a steeple in the distance,’ said
Caddy with a sudden idea; ‘and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh,
Caddy, Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the Borrioboola lette=
rs.’
‘And about your wardrobe, Caddy?’ =
said
I. For she was under no restraint with us.
‘Well, my dear Esther,’ she return=
ed,
drying her eyes, ‘I must do the best I can and trust to my dear Prince
never to have an unkind remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the
question concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and
would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor cares.̵=
7;
Caddy was not at all deficient in natural
affection for her mother, but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fa=
ct,
which I am afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so
much to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such
discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a little sc=
heme
that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying with us for three week=
s,
my staying with her for one, and our all three contriving and cutting out, =
and
repairing, and sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think o=
f to
make the most of her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as C=
addy
was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out ag=
ain
in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be squeezed out =
of a
ten-pound note, which Mr Jellyby had found in the docks I suppose, but whic=
h he
at all events gave her. What my guardian would not have given her if we had
encouraged him, it would be difficult to say, but we thought it right to
compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this
compromise, and if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy whe=
n we
sat down to work.
She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor gi=
rl,
and pricked her fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could=
not
help reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly with
vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over that and bega=
n to
improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my darling, and my little maid
Charley, and a milliner out of the town, and I, sat hard at work, as pleasa=
ntly
as possible.
Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious =
8216;to
learn housekeeping,’ as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her
learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke tha=
t I
laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she propos=
ed
it. However, I said, ‘Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome to learn
anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,’ and I showed her all my
books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have supposed that I w=
as
showing her some wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had
seen her, whenever I jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me,
certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater imposter th=
an I
with a blinder follower than Caddy Jellyby.
So what with working and housekeeping, and les=
sons
to Charley, and backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with =
Ada,
the three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see what
could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take care of my
guardian.
When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to t=
he
furnished lodging in Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three
times, where preparations were in progress too--a good many, I observed, for
enhancing the comforts of old Mr Turveydrop, and a few for putting the newly
married couple away cheaply at the top of the house--but our great point wa=
s to
make the furnished lodging decent for the wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs
Jellyby beforehand with some faint sense of the occasion.
The latter was the more difficult thing of the=
two
because Mrs Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room =
(the
back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste- paper and
Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. M=
rs
Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong coffee, dictating, and holding
Borrioboolan interviews by appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to =
me
to be going into a decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr Jellyby
came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got
something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then, feeling =
that
he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton Garden in the wet. The =
poor
children scrambled up and tumbled down the house as they had always been
accustomed to do.
The production of these devoted little sacrifi=
ces
in any presentable condition being quite out of the question at a week's
notice, I proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on
her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should confine =
our
greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a clean breakfast. In
truth Mrs Jellyby required a good deal of attention, the lattice-work up her
back having widened considerably since I first knew her and her hair looking
like the mane of a dustman's horse.
Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe
would be the best means of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs Jellyby to
come and look at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the
unwholesome boy was gone.
‘My dear Miss Summerson,’ said she,
rising from her desk with her usual sweetness of temper, ‘these are
really ridiculous preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of yo=
ur
kindness. There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of C=
addy
being married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!’
She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and
looked at the clothes in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one
distinct idea to her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her h=
ead,
‘My good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have
been equipped for Africa!’
On our going downstairs again, Mrs Jellyby ask= ed me whether this troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesda= y. And on my replying yes, she said, ‘Will my room be required, my dear = Miss Summerson? For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away.’<= o:p>
I took the liberty of saying that the room wou=
ld
certainly be wanted and that I thought we must put the papers away somewher=
e. ‘Well,
my dear Miss Summerson,’ said Mrs Jellyby, ‘you know best, I da=
re
say. But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that
extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don't know which w=
ay
to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and t=
he
inconvenience is very serious.’
‘It is not likely to occur again,’
said I, smiling. ‘Caddy will be married but once, probably.’
‘That's true,’ Mrs Jellyby replied=
; ‘that's
true, my dear. I suppose we must make the best of it!’
The next question was how Mrs Jellyby should be
dressed on the occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on
serenely from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally
shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior spirit=
who
could just bear with our trifling.
The state in which her dresses were, and the
extraordinary confusion in which she kept them, added not a little to our
difficulty; but at length we devised something not very unlike what a commo=
n-place
mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which Mrs
Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on by the
dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then observe to me how s=
orry
she was that I had not turned my thoughts to Africa, were consistent with t=
he
rest of her behaviour.
The lodging was rather confined as to space, b=
ut I
fancied that if Mrs Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint
Paul's or Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the si=
ze
of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to be di=
rty
in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it had been possib=
le
to break was unbroken at the time of those preparations for Caddy's marriag=
e,
that nothing which it had been possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, a=
nd
that no domestic object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear
child's knee to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well
accumulate upon it.
Poor Mr Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and alm=
ost
always sat when he was at home with his head against the wall, became
interested when he saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some o=
rder
among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such wonde=
rful
things came tumbling out of the closets when they were opened--bits of moul=
dy
pie, sour bottles, Mrs Jellyby's caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and s=
hoes
of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of
paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs Jellyby's bonnets, bo=
oks
with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out by being
turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, heads and tails of
shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee- grounds, umbrellas--that he looked
frightened, and left off again. But he came regularly every evening and sat
without his coat, with his head against the wall, as though he would have
helped us if he had known how.
‘Poor Pa!’ said Caddy to me on the
night before the great day, when we really had got things a little to right=
s. ‘It
seems unkind to leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I
first knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's usel=
ess.
Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We never have a
servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything.’
Mr Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he
seemed very low indeed and shed tears, I thought.
‘My heart aches for him; that it does!=
8217;
sobbed Caddy. ‘I can't help thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I h=
ope
to be happy with Prince, and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy w=
ith
Ma. What a disappointed life!’
‘My dear Caddy!’ said Mr Jellyby,
looking slowly round from the wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever
heard him say three words together.
‘Yes, Pa!’ cried Caddy, going to h=
im
and embracing him affectionately.
‘My dear Caddy,’ said Mr Jellyby. =
‘Never
have--’
‘Not Prince, Pa?’ faltered Caddy. =
‘Not
have Prince?’
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mr Jellyby. &=
#8216;Have
him, certainly. But, never have--’
I mentioned in my account of our first visit in
Thavies Inn that Richard described Mr Jellyby as frequently opening his mou=
th
after dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his
mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy manner.
‘What do you wish me not to have? Don't =
have
what, dear Pa?’ asked Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his nec=
k.
‘Never have a mission, my dear child.=
217;
Mr Jellyby groaned and laid his head against t=
he
wall again, and this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to
expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he had be=
en
more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been completely exhau=
sted
long before I knew him.
I thought Mrs Jellyby never would have left off
serenely looking over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twe=
lve
o'clock before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it
required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired out, sat
down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon cheered up, and we d=
id
wonders with it before we went to bed.
In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few
flowers and a quantity of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite ga=
y.
The plain breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming.=
But
when my darling came, I thought--and I think now-- that I never had seen su=
ch a
dear face as my beautiful pet's.
We made a little feast for the children upstai=
rs,
and we put Peepy at the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her
bridal dress, and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to
think that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again
until we brought Prince up to fetch her away--when, I am sorry to say, Peepy
bit him. Then there was old Mr Turveydrop downstairs, in a state of deportm=
ent
not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy and giving my guardian to
understand that his son's happiness was his own parental work and that he
sacrificed personal considerations to ensure it. ‘My dear sir,’
said Mr Turveydrop, ‘these young people will live with me; my house is
large enough for their accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter o=
f my
roof. I could have wished--you will understand the allusion, Mr Jarndyce, f=
or
you remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent --I could have wished =
that
my son had married into a family where there was more deportment, but the w=
ill
of heaven be done!’
Mr and Mrs Pardiggle were of the party--Mr
Pardiggle, an obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair,
who was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs Pardiggl=
e's
mite, or their five boys' mites. Mr Quale, with his hair brushed back as us=
ual
and his knobs of temples shining very much, was also there, not in the
character of a disappointed lover, but as the accepted of a young--at least=
, an
unmarried--lady, a Miss Wisk, who was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my
guardian said, was to show the world that woman's mission was man's mission=
and
that the only genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving
declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. The gue=
sts
were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs Jellyby's, all devoted to pu=
blic
objects only. Besides those I have mentioned, there was an extremely dirty =
lady
with her bonnet all awry and the ticketed price of her dress still sticking=
on
it, whose neglected home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but
whose church was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said =
it
was his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms of
coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.
A party, having less in common with such an
occasion, could hardly have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean
mission as the domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among
them; indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat =
down
to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow
sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of her tyrant, man. One
other singularity was that nobody with a mission--except Mr Quale, whose
mission, as I think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with
everybody's mission-- cared at all for anybody's mission. Mrs Pardiggle bei=
ng
as clear that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon
the poor and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss =
Wisk
was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of wom=
an
from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs Jellyby, all the while, sat smili=
ng
at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.
But I am anticipating now the purport of our
conversation on the ride home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went =
to
church, and Mr Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr Turveydr=
op,
with his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman like=
a
cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, stood stiff and
high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the ceremony, and afterwards
saluted us, I could never say enough to do it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I ca=
nnot
report as prepossessing in appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened =
to
the proceedings, as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs
Jellyby, with her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerne=
d of
all the company.
We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs Jellyby
sat at the head of the table and Mr Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previous=
ly
stolen upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was
Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an agreeable
surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports of kicking grief
that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede to the proposal that he
should be admitted to the breakfast table. So he came down and sat in my la=
p;
and Mrs Jellyby, after saying, in reference to the state of his pinafore, &=
#8216;Oh,
you naughty Peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!’ was not at all
discomposed. He was very good except that he brought down Noah with him (ou=
t of
an ark I had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head fir=
st
into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.
My guardian, with his sweet temper and his qui=
ck
perception and his amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the
ungenial company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, =
or
her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even that =
as
part of a world in which there was anything else; but my guardian turned it=
all
to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the honour of the occasion, and bro=
ught
us through the breakfast nobly. What we should have done without him, I am
afraid to think, for all the company despising the bride and bridegroom and=
old
Mr Turveydrop--and old Mr Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment, conside=
ring
himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a very unpromising case.=
At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go
and when all her property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to
take her and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,
then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with the grea=
test
tenderness.
‘I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing
from dictation, Ma,’ sobbed Caddy. ‘I hope you forgive me now.&=
#8217;
‘Oh, Caddy, Caddy!’ said Mrs Jelly=
by. ‘I
have told you over and over again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an=
end
of it.’
‘You are sure you are not the least angry
with me, Ma? Say you are sure before I go away, Ma?’
‘You foolish Caddy,’ returned Mrs
Jellyby, ‘do I look angry, or have I inclination to be angry, or time=
to
be angry? How CAN you?’
‘Take a little care of Pa while I am gon=
e,
Mama!’
Mrs Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. &=
#8216;You
romantic child,’ said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. ‘Go al=
ong.
I am excellent friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!=
8217;
Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his
cheek against hers as if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took
place in the hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchie=
f,
and sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he found =
some
consolation in walls. I almost think he did.
And then Prince took her arm in his and turned
with great emotion and respect to his father, whose deportment at that mome=
nt
was overwhelming.
‘Thank you over and over again, father!&=
#8217;
said Prince, kissing his hand. ‘I am very grateful for all your kindn=
ess
and consideration regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Cadd=
y.’
‘Very,’ sobbed Caddy. ‘Ve-ry=
!’
‘My dear son,’ said Mr Turveydrop,=
‘and
dear daughter, I have done my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers
above us and looks down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection,
will be my recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter,=
I
believe?’
‘Dear father, never!’ cried Prince=
.
‘Never, never, dear Mr Turveydrop!’
said Caddy.
‘This,’ returned Mr Turveydrop, =
8216;is
as it should be. My children, my home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is
yours. I will never leave you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son=
, you
contemplate an absence of a week, I think?’
‘A week, dear father. We shall return ho=
me
this day week.’
‘My dear child,’ said Mr Turveydro=
p, ‘let
me, even under the present exceptional circumstances, recommend strict
punctuality. It is highly important to keep the connexion together; and
schools, if at all neglected, are apt to take offence.’
‘This day week, father, we shall be sure=
to
be home to dinner.’
‘Good!’ said Mr Turveydrop. ‘=
;You
will find fires, my dear Caroline, in your own room, and dinner prepared in=
my
apartment. Yes, yes, Prince!’ anticipating some self-denying objectio=
n on
his son's part with a great air. ‘You and our Caroline will be strang=
e in
the upper part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my
apartment. Now, bless ye!’
They drove away, and whether I wondered most a=
t Mrs
Jellyby or at Mr Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the
same condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too, I
received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr Jellyby. He came=
up
to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed them earnestly, and opened h=
is
mouth twice. I was so sure of his meaning that I said, quite flurried, R=
16;You
are very welcome, sir. Pray don't mention it!’
‘I hope this marriage is for the best,
guardian,’ said I when we three were on our road home.
‘I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We
shall see.’
‘Is the wind in the east to-day?’ I
ventured to ask him.
He laughed heartily and answered, ‘No.=
8217;
‘But it must have been this morning, I
think,’ said I.
He answered ‘No’ again, and this t=
ime
my dear girl confidently answered ‘No’ too and shook the lovely
head which, with its blooming flowers against the golden hair, was like the
very spring. ‘Much YOU know of east winds, my ugly darling,’ sa=
id
I, kissing her in my admiration--I couldn't help it.
Well! It was only their love for me, I know ve=
ry
well, and it is a long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again,
because it gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind
where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was
sunshine and summer air.
I had not been at home again many days when one
evening I went upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shou=
lder
and see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying
business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in
whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong
and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners like a
saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters Charley's young hand=
had
made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering, it so plump and roun=
d.
Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things and had as nimble little
fingers as I ever watched.
‘Well, Charley,’ said I, looking o=
ver
a copy of the letter O in which it was represented as square, triangular,
pear-shaped, and collapsed in all kinds of ways, ‘we are improving. I=
f we
only get to make it round, we shall be perfect, Charley.’
Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the=
pen
wouldn't join Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
‘Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in
time.’
Charley laid down her pen, the copy being
finished, opened and shut her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the pa=
ge,
half in pride and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.
‘Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, d=
id
you know a poor person of the name of Jenny?’
‘A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes.̵=
7;
‘She came and spoke to me when I was out=
a
little while ago, and said you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the
young lady's little maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and I said =
yes,
miss.’
‘I thought she had left this neighbourho=
od
altogether, Charley.’
‘So she had, miss, but she's come back a=
gain
to where she used to live--she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of=
the
name of Liz, miss?’
‘I think I do, Charley, though not by na=
me.’
‘That's what she said!’ returned
Charley. ‘They have both come back, miss, and have been tramping high=
and
low.’
‘Tramping high and low, have they, Charl=
ey?’
‘Yes, miss.’ If Charley could only
have made the letters in her copy as round as the eyes with which she looked
into my face, they would have been excellent. ‘And this poor person c=
ame
about the house three or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--a=
ll
she wanted, she said--but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw =
me
a-going about, miss,’ said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest
delight and pride, ‘and she thought I looked like your maid!’
‘Did she though, really, Charley?’=
‘Yes, miss!’ said Charley. ‘=
Really
and truly.’ And Charley, with another short laugh of the purest glee,
made her eyes very round again and looked as serious as became my maid. I w=
as
never tired of seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity,
standing before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,
and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the pleasan=
test
way.
‘And where did you see her, Charley?R=
17;
said I.
My little maid's countenance fell as she repli=
ed, ‘By
the doctor's shop, miss.’ For Charley wore her black frock yet.
I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but
Charley said no. It was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tram=
ped
down to Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy, Cha=
rley
said. No father, no mother, no any one. ‘Like as Tom might have been,
miss, if Emma and me had died after father,’ said Charley, her round =
eyes
filling with tears.
‘And she was getting medicine for him,
Charley?’
‘She said, miss,’ returned Charley=
, ‘how
that he had once done as much for her.’
My little maid's face was so eager and her qui=
et
hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that=
I
had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. ‘Well, Charley,̵=
7;
said I, ‘it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go rou=
nd
to Jenny's and see what's the matter.’
The alacrity with which Charley brought my bon= net and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went out.<= o:p>
It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shudd=
ered
in the wind. The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little
intermission for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had
partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us, where a few stars were =
shining.
In the north and north-west, where the sun had set three hours before, there
was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lin=
es
of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards
London a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between
these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an
unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and on all=
the
faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as solemn as might
be.
I had no thought that night--none, I am quite
sure--of what was soon to happen to me. But I have always remembered since =
that
when we had stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we w=
ent
upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as bei=
ng
something different from what I then was. I know it was then and there that=
I
had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time and
with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices in
the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the miry
hill.
It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We foun= d it quieter than I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.<= o:p>
We came to the cottage, where there was a feeb=
le
candle in the patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother=
of
the little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor
fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the
chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his arm, like a lit=
tle
bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook
until the crazy door and window shook. The place was closer than before and=
had
an unhealthy and a very peculiar smell.
I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to=
the
woman, which was at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instan=
tly
and stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
His action was so quick and my being the cause=
of
it was so evident that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.
‘I won't go no more to the berryin groun=
d,’
muttered the boy; ‘I ain't a-going there, so I tell you!’
I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She s=
aid
to me in a low voice, ‘Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to=
his
head,’ and said to him, ‘Jo, Jo, what's the matter?’
‘I know wot she's come for!’ cried=
the
boy.
‘Who?’
‘The lady there. She's come to get me to=
go
along with her to the berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I d=
on't
like the name on it. She might go a-berryin ME.’ His shivering came on
again, and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.
‘He has been talking off and on about su=
ch
like all day, ma'am,’ said Jenny softly. ‘Why, how you stare! T=
his
is MY lady, Jo.’
‘Is it?’ returned the boy doubtful=
ly,
and surveying me with his arm held out above his burning eyes. ‘She l=
ooks
to me the t'other one. It ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but=
she
looks to me the t'other one.’
My little Charley, with her premature experien=
ce
of illness and trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went
quietly up to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurs=
e.
Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful face,
which seemed to engage his confidence.
‘I say!’ said the boy. ‘YOU =
tell
me. Ain't the lady the t'other lady?’
Charley shook her head as she methodically drew
his rags about him and made him as warm as she could.
‘Oh!’ the boy muttered. ‘The=
n I
s'pose she ain't.’
‘I came to see if I could do you any goo=
d,’
said I. ‘What is the matter with you?’
‘I'm a-being froze,’ returned the =
boy
hoarsely, with his haggard gaze wandering about me, ‘and then burnt u=
p,
and then froze, and then burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my hea=
d's
all sleepy, and all a-going mad-like--and I'm so dry--and my bones isn't ha=
lf
so much bones as pain.’
‘When did he come here?’ I asked t=
he
woman.
‘This morning, ma'am, I found him at the
corner of the town. I had known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?̵=
7;
‘Tom-all-Alone's,’ the boy replied=
.
Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it
was only for a very little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and
roll it heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.
‘When did he come from London?’ I
asked.
‘I come from London yes'day,’ said=
the
boy himself, now flushed and hot. ‘I'm a-going somewheres.’
‘Where is he going?’ I asked.
‘Somewheres,’ repeated the boy in a
louder tone. ‘I have been moved on, and moved on, more nor ever I was
afore, since the t'other one give me the sov'ring. Mrs Snagsby, she's alway=
s a-
watching, and a-driving of me--what have I done to her?--and they're all
a-watching and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the ti=
me
when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm a-going
somewheres. That's where I'm a- going. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone's=
, as
she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the Stolbuns Road. It's as good as
another.’
He always concluded by addressing Charley.
‘What is to be done with him?’ sai=
d I,
taking the woman aside. ‘He could not travel in this state even if he=
had
a purpose and knew where he was going!’
‘I know no more, ma'am, than the dead,=
8217;
she replied, glancing compassionately at him. ‘Perhaps the dead know
better, if they could only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's s=
ake,
and I've given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will
take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but I call it mine); b=
ut I
can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, =
he'd
be rough in putting him out and might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz b=
ack!’
The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke,
and the boy got up with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be go=
ing.
When the little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it ou=
t of
bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she was, doing=
all
this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living in Mrs Blinder's attic
with Tom and Emma again.
The friend had been here and there, and had be=
en
played about from hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it =
was
too early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last it=
was
too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent her back aga=
in
to the first, and so backward and forward, until it appeared to me as if bo=
th
must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties instead of
performing them. And now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she h=
ad
been running and was frightened too, ‘Jenny, your master's on the road
home, and mine's not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no
more for him!’ They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into
his hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he
shuffled out of the house.
‘Give me the child, my dear,’ said=
its
mother to Charley, ‘and thank you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good
night! Young lady, if my master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by t=
he
kiln by and by, where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!&=
#8217;
She hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her chi=
ld
at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her drunken husban=
d. I
was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should bring he=
r into
trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave the boy to die. Charl=
ey,
who knew what to do much better than I did, and whose quickness equalled her
presence of mind, glided on before me, and presently we came up with Jo, ju=
st
short of the brick-kiln.
I think he must have begun his journey with so=
me
small bundle under his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he s=
till
carried his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went
bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we calle=
d to
him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing with his lustro=
us
eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his shivering fit.
I asked him to come with us, and we would take
care that he had some shelter for the night.
‘I don't want no shelter,’ he said=
; ‘I
can lay amongst the warm bricks.’
‘But don't you know that people die ther=
e?’
replied Charley.
‘They dies everywheres,’ said the =
boy.
‘They dies in their lodgings--she knows where; I showed her--and they
dies down in Tom- all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives,
according to what I see.’ Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, ‘=
If
she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there THREE of 'em t=
hen?’
Charley looked at me a little frightened. I fe=
lt
half frightened at myself when the boy glared on me so.
But he turned and followed when I beckoned to =
him,
and finding that he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straig=
ht
home. It was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man=
. I
doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's steps were=
so
uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however, and was strangely
unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange a thing.
Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk i=
nto
the corner of the window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely
could be called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into=
the
drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr Skimpole, who had co=
me down
by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any
clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted.
They came out with me directly to look at the =
boy.
The servants had gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-se=
at
with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found =
in a
ditch. ‘This is a sorrowful case,’ said my guardian after asking
him a question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. ‘What =
do
you say, Harold?’
‘You had better turn him out,’ sai=
d Mr
Skimpole.
‘What do you mean?’ inquired my
guardian, almost sternly.
‘My dear Jarndyce,’ said Mr Skimpo=
le, ‘you
know what I am: I am a child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a
constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a
medical man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about
him.’
Mr Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the
drawing-room again and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool=
as
we stood by.
‘You'll say it's childish,’ observ=
ed Mr
Skimpole, looking gaily at us. ‘Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a
child, and I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the r=
oad,
you only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, =
you
know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five
shillings, or five pound ten--you are arithmeticians, and I am not--and get=
rid
of him!’
‘And what is he to do then?’ asked=
my
guardian.
‘Upon my life,’ said Mr Skimpole,
shrugging his shoulders with his engaging smile, ‘I have not the least
idea what he is to do then. But I have no doubt he'll do it.’
‘Now, is it not a horrible reflection,=
8217;
said my guardian, to whom I had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of=
the
two women, ‘is it not a horrible reflection,’ walking up and do=
wn
and rumpling his hair, ‘that if this wretched creature were a convict=
ed
prisoner, his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well t=
aken
care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?’
‘My dear Jarndyce,’ returned Mr
Skimpole, ‘you'll pardon the simplicity of the question, coming as it
does from a creature who is perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why IS=
N'T
he a prisoner then?’
My guardian stopped and looked at him with a
whimsical mixture of amusement and indignation in his face.
‘Our young friend is not to be suspected=
of
any delicacy, I should imagine,’ said Mr Skimpole, unabashed and cand=
id. ‘It
seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more
respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into prison.
There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and consequently more o=
f a
certain sort of poetry.’
‘I believe,’ returned my guardian,
resuming his uneasy walk, ‘that there is not such another child on ea=
rth
as yourself.’
‘Do you really?’ said Mr Skimpole.=
‘I
dare say! But I confess I don't see why our young friend, in his degree, sh=
ould
not seek to invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no dou=
bt
born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he =
has
an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young friend's natural dinner hour,
most likely about noon, our young friend says in effect to society, 'I am
hungry; will you have the goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' Soci=
ety,
which has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of
spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce
that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must excuse m=
e if
I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected energy, which ha=
s a
certain amount of reason in it and a certain amount of romance; and I don't
know but what I should be more interested in our young friend, as an
illustration of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one =
can
be.’
‘In the meantime,’ I ventured to
observe, ‘he is getting worse.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Mr Skimpole
cheerfully, ‘as Miss Summerson, with her practical good sense, observ=
es,
he is getting worse. Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he g=
ets
still worse.’
The amiable face with which he said it, I thin=
k I
shall never forget.
‘Of course, little woman,’ observe=
d my
guardian, turning to me, ‘I can ensure his admission into the proper
place by merely going there to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things
when, in his condition, that is necessary. But it's growing late, and is a =
very
bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the wholesome
loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till morning, when he=
can
be wrapped up and removed. We'll do that.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Skimpole, with his h=
ands
upon the keys of the piano as we moved away. ‘Are you going back to o=
ur
young friend?’
‘Yes,’ said my guardian.
‘How I envy you your constitution, Jarnd=
yce!’
returned Mr Skimpole with playful admiration. ‘You don't mind these
things; neither does Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywh=
ere,
and do anything. Such is will! I have no will at all--and no won't--simply
can't.’
‘You can't recommend anything for the bo=
y, I
suppose?’ said my guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angri=
ly;
only half angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr Skimpole an accountab=
le
being.
‘My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle o=
f cooling
medicine in his pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take =
it.
You can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he sle=
eps
and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it is mere
impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss Summerson has such a
knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the administration of detail th=
at
she knows all about it.’
We went back into the hall and explained to Jo
what we proposed to do, which Charley explained to him again and which he
received with the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking =
on
at what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants compassionat=
ing
his miserable state and being very anxious to help, we soon got the loft-ro=
om
ready; and some of the men about the house carried him across the wet yard,
well wrapped up. It was pleasant to observe how kind they were to him and h=
ow
there appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently calling
him ‘Old Chap’ was likely to revive his spirits. Charley direct=
ed
the operations and went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with
such little stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My
guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and reported to me
when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on the boy's behalf, whi=
ch a
messenger was charged to deliver at day-light in the morning, that he seemed
easier and inclined to sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he
said, in case of his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not
make any noise without being heard.
Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr Skimpole=
was
left alone all this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of
pathetic airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with
great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the drawing- room he =
said
he would give us a little ballad which had come into his head ‘apropo=
s of
our young friend,’ and he sang one about a peasant boy,
‘Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wan=
der
and roam, Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home.’
quite exquisitely. It was a song that always m=
ade
him cry, he told us.
He was extremely gay all the rest of the eveni=
ng,
for he absolutely chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought =
by
what a happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glas=
s of
negus, ‘Better health to our young friend!’ and supposed and ga=
ily
pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become Lord Mayo=
r of
London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the Jarndyce Institution
and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little annual Corporation Pilgrimage to=
St.
Albans. He had no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent bo=
y in
his way, but his way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole =
was,
Harold Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he fi=
rst
made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his failings and
had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the bargain; and he hop=
ed
we would do the same.
Charley's last report was that the boy was qui=
et.
I could see, from my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly;=
and
I went to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.
There was more movement and more talking than
usual a little before daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked
out of my window and asked one of our men who had been among the active
sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the house. T=
he
lantern was still burning in the loft-window.
‘It's the boy, miss,’ said he.
‘Is he worse?’ I inquired.
‘Gone, miss.’
‘Dead!’
‘Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off.’<= o:p>
At what time of the night he had gone, or how,=
or
why, it seemed hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been l=
eft,
and the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he h=
ad
got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty cart-house
below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and it looked as if =
it
had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was missing. On this fact being
clearly ascertained, we all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had
come upon him in the night and that, allured by some imaginary object or pu=
rsued
by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless
state; all of us, that is to say, but Mr Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested=
, in
his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend that he
was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him, and that he had
with great natural politeness taken himself off.
Every possible inquiry was made, and every pla=
ce
was searched. The brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the=
two
women were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and nobody
could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for some time be=
en
too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit of any tracing by
footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and stack, were examined by =
our
men for a long distance round, lest the boy should be lying in such a place
insensible or dead; but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever been
near. From the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.
The search continued for five days. I do not m=
ean
that it ceased even then, but that my attention was then diverted into a
current very memorable to me.
As Charley was at her writing again in my room=
in
the evening, and as I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble.
Looking up, I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.
‘Charley,’ said I, ‘are you =
so
cold?’
‘I think I am, miss,’ she replied.=
‘I
don't know what it is. I can't hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at ab=
out
this same time, miss. Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill.’
I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to = the door of communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and lock= ed it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key.<= o:p>
Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, =
8216;Not
now, my dearest. Go away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you
presently.’ Ah! It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I
were companions again.
Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very
ill. I moved her to my room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to
nurse her. I told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary
that I should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above
all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and even
reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter saying that
she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she loved me and wish=
ed
my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that she c=
ame
beneath the window even oftener than she had come to the door, and if I had
learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever apart, =
how
did I learn to love it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listeni=
ng
and replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it
afterwards, when the harder time came!
They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and=
by
keeping the door wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada h=
ad
vacated that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There =
was
not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they would all most
gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night without the least fe=
ar
or unwillingness, but I thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was
never to see Ada and whom I could trust to come and go with all precaution.
Through her means I got out to take the air with my guardian when there was=
no
fear of meeting Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any m=
ore
than in any other respect.
And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse,=
and
fell into heavy danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round=
of
day and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such a
gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her head in my
arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would come to her in no other
attitude--I silently prayed to our Father in heaven that I might not forget=
the
lesson which this little sister taught me.
I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's
pretty looks would change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was
such a child with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater p=
art,
lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind rambled
again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little children, she st=
ill
knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my arms when she could lie qui=
et
nowhere else, and murmur out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At
those times I used to think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies
that the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them =
in
their need was dead!
There were other times when Charley knew me we=
ll
and talked to me, telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that
she was sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley wou=
ld
speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could to comf=
ort
him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was the only son of his
mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's daughter raised up by the gracio=
us
hand upon her bed of death. And Charley told me that when her father died s=
he
had kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be
raised up and given back to his poor children, and that if she should never=
get
better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come into To=
m's
mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show Tom how these peop=
le
of old days had been brought back to life on earth, only that we might know=
our
hope to be restored to heaven!
But of all the various times there were in
Charley's illness, there was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I h=
ave
spoken of. And there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last
high belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on the
part of her poor despised father.
And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and
slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then beg=
an
to mend. The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley bei=
ng
in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged; and even
that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish likeness again.=
It was a great morning when I could tell Ada a=
ll
this as she stood out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley
and I at last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening,=
I
felt that I was stricken cold.
Happily for both of us, it was not until Charl=
ey
was safe in bed again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagi=
on
of her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at
tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly
following in Charley's steps.
I was well enough, however, to be up early in =
the
morning, and to return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and =
to
talk with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that I
had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself,
though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at times--with a curious se=
nse
of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether.
In the evening I was so much worse that I reso=
lved
to prepare Charley, with which view I said, ‘You're getting quite str=
ong,
Charley, are you not?’
‘Oh, quite!’ said Charley.
‘Strong enough to be told a secret, I th=
ink,
Charley?’
‘Quite strong enough for that, miss!R=
17;
cried Charley. But Charley's face fell in the height of her delight, for sh=
e saw
the secret in MY face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my
bosom, and said ‘Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!’ and a
great deal more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.
‘Now, Charley,’ said I after letti=
ng
her go on for a little while, ‘if I am to be ill, my great trust, hum=
anly
speaking, is in you. And unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you
always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.’
‘If you'll let me cry a little longer, m=
iss,’
said Charley. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a litt=
le
longer. Oh, my dear!’--how affectionately and devotedly she poured th=
is
out as she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--’I'l=
l be
good.’
So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it d=
id
us both good.
‘Trust in me now, if you please, miss,=
8217;
said Charley quietly. ‘I am listening to everything you say.’
‘It's very little at present, Charley. I
shall tell your doctor to-night that I don't think I am well and that you a=
re
going to nurse me.’
For that the poor child thanked me with her wh=
ole
heart. ‘And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I
should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go,
Charley, and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and am aslee=
p.
At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come.=
’
Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was ve=
ry
heavy. I saw the doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wishe=
d to
ask relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I hav=
e a
very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melt=
ing
into night again; but I was just able on the first morning to get to the wi=
ndow
and speak to my darling.
On the second morning I heard her dear voice--=
Oh,
how dear now!-- outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech
being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer softly=
, ‘Don't
disturb her, Charley, for the world!’
‘How does my own Pride look, Charley?=
217;
I inquired.
‘Disappointed, miss,’ said Charley,
peeping through the curtain.
‘But I know she is very beautiful this
morning.’
‘She is indeed, miss,’ answered
Charley, peeping. ‘Still looking up at the window.’
With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, alwa=
ys
loveliest when raised like that!
I called Charley to me and gave her her last
charge.
‘Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, =
she
will try to make her way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love =
me
truly, to the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon =
me
for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.’
‘I never will! I never will!’ she
promised me.
‘I believe it, my dear Charley. And now =
come
and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I ca=
nnot
see you, Charley; I am blind.’
It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and
troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but
little day--and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rat=
tled
down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'c=
lock
has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the
night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in =
his
lodge. From tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equit=
y,
bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, di=
mly
blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer y=
et
toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the
average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-=
like
industry these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours=
be
past, that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.
In the neighbouring court, where the Lord
Chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency
towards beer and supper. Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins, whose respective sons,
engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have be=
en
lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and scour=
ing
the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers--Mrs Pipe=
r and
Mrs Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being ab=
ed,
and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr Krook and=
his
lodger, and the fact of Mr Krook's being ‘continually in liquor,̵=
7;
and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmon=
ic
Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano through the partly
opened windows jingles out into the court, and where Little Swills, after
keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard
taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his
friends and patrons to ‘Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!&=
#8217;
Mrs Perkins and Mrs Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady=
of
professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who has a s=
pace
to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window, Mrs Perkins posses=
sing
information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as
Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her baby is clandestinely
conveyed to the Sol's Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment
during the entertainments. ‘Sooner than which, myself,’ says Mrs
Perkins, ‘I would get my living by selling lucifers.’ Mrs Piper=
, as
in duty bound, is of the same opinion, holding that a private station is be=
tter
than public applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication,=
Mrs
Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appear=
ing
with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs Piper accepts that tankard and retir=
es
indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs Perkins, who has had her own
pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young
Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-
shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting
stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now=
, too,
the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious =
of
bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is ei=
ther
robbing or being robbed.
It is a close night, though the damp cold is
searching too, and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It i=
s a
fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, t=
he
sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the registrar =
of
deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air--there is plenty=
in
it--or it may be something in himself that is in fault; but Mr Weevle,
otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes between his own r=
oom
and the open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever si=
nce
it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early
to-night, Mr Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tig=
ht
velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportio=
n),
oftener than before.
It is no phenomenon that Mr Snagsby should be =
ill
at ease too, for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influe=
nce
of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr Snagsby haunts what seems =
to
be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an
irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol's Arms w=
ith
the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, =
and so
terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from
his own door and back again, Mr Snagsby approaches.
‘What, Mr Weevle?’ says the statio=
ner,
stopping to speak. ‘Are YOU there?’
‘Aye!’ says Weevle, ‘Here I =
am, Mr
Snagsby.’
‘Airing yourself, as I am doing, before =
you
go to bed?’ the stationer inquires.
‘Why, there's not much air to be got her=
e;
and what there is, is not very freshening,’ Weevle answers, glancing =
up
and down the court.
‘Very true, sir. Don't you observe,̵=
7;
says Mr Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little, ‘don't =
you
observe, Mr Weevle, that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that
you're rather greasy here, sir?’
‘Why, I have noticed myself that there i=
s a
queer kind of flavour in the place to-night,’ Mr Weevle rejoins. R=
16;I
suppose it's chops at the Sol's Arms.’
‘Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?R=
17; Mr
Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. ‘Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I
should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has bee=
n burning
'em, sir! And I don't think’--Mr Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and =
then
spits and wipes his mouth--’I don't think-- not to put too fine a poi=
nt
upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron.̵=
7;
‘That's very likely. It's a tainting sor=
t of
weather.’
‘It IS a tainting sort of weather,’
says Mr Snagsby, ‘and I find it sinking to the spirits.’
‘By George! I find it gives me the horro=
rs,’
returns Mr Weevle.
‘Then, you see, you live in a lonesome w=
ay,
and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it,’ s=
ays Mr
Snagsby, looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and th=
en
falling back a step to look up at the house. ‘I couldn't live in that
room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an eveni=
ng,
sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and stand here sooner
than sit there. But then it's very true that you didn't see, in your room, =
what
I saw there. That makes a difference.’
‘I know quite enough about it,’
returns Tony.
‘It's not agreeable, is it?’ pursu=
es Mr
Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. ‘Mr K=
rook
ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.’
‘I hope he does,’ says Tony. ̵=
6;But
I doubt it.’
‘You find the rent too high, do you, sir=
?’
returns the stationer. ‘Rents
Mr Weevle again glances up and down the court =
and
then looks at the stationer. Mr Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks up=
ward
for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way
out of this conversation.
‘It's a curious fact, sir,’ he
observes, slowly rubbing his hands, ‘that he should have been--’=
;
‘Who's he?’ interrupts Mr Weevle.<= o:p>
‘The deceased, you know,’ says Mr
Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase and tap=
ping
his acquaintance on the button.
‘Ah, to be sure!’ returns the othe=
r as
if he were not over-fond of the subject. ‘I thought we had done with =
him.’
‘I was only going to say it's a curious
fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writ=
ers,
and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too.
Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,̵=
7;
says Mr Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely
asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr Weevle, ‘because I have known
writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done really very respectable
indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,’ adds Mr Snagsby with a misgiving
that he has not improved the matter.
‘It's a curious coincidence, as you say,=
’
answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.
‘Seems a fate in it, don't there?’
suggests the stationer.
‘There does.’
‘Just so,’ observes the stationer =
with
his confirmatory cough. ‘Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr
Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night’--Mr Snagsby speaks as =
if
it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means =
of
escape ever since he stopped to speak--’my little woman will be looki=
ng
for me else. Good night, sir!’
If Mr Snagsby hastens home to save his little
woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that
score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all t=
his
time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her h=
ead,
honouring Mr Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes pas=
t.
‘You'll know me again, ma'am, at all eve=
nts,’
says Mr Weevle to himself; ‘and I can't compliment you on your
appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fe=
llow
NEVER coming!’
This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr Weevle
softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the
street door. Then they go upstairs, Mr Weevle heavily, and Mr Guppy (for it=
is
he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak =
low.
‘I thought you had gone to Jericho at le=
ast
instead of coming here,’ says Tony.
‘Why, I said about ten.’
‘You said about ten,’ Tony repeats=
. ‘Yes,
so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it=
's a
hundred o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!’
‘What has been the matter?’
‘That's it!’ says Tony. ‘Not=
hing
has been the matter. But here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly =
old
crib till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a
blessed- looking candle!’ says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning
taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
‘That's easily improved,’ Mr Guppy
observes as he takes the snuffers in hand.
‘IS it?’ returns his friend. ̵=
6;Not
so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that ever since it was
lighted.’
‘Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?&=
#8217;
inquires Mr Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with h=
is
elbow on the table.
‘William Guppy,’ replies the other=
, ‘I
am in the downs. It's this unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey
downstairs, I suppose.’ Mr Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray fr=
om
him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
and looks at the fire. Mr Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head and
sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.
‘Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Ton=
y?’
‘Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby,’
said Mr Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.
‘On business?’
‘No. No business. He was only sauntering=
by
and stopped to prose.’
‘I thought it was Snagsby,’ says Mr
Guppy, ‘and thought it as well that he shouldn't see me, so I waited =
till
he was gone.’
‘There we go again, William G.!’ c=
ried
Tony, looking up for an instant. ‘So mysterious and secret! By George=
, if
we were going to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!=
8217;
Mr Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of
changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, rou=
nd
the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey wi=
th
the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represen=
ted
on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedesta=
l,
and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, =
and
her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
‘That's very like Lady Dedlock,’ s=
ays Mr
Guppy. ‘It's a speaking likeness.’
‘I wish it was,’ growls Tony, with=
out
changing his position. ‘I should have some fashionable conversation,
here, then.’
Finding by this time that his friend is not to=
be
wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr Guppy puts about upon the ill-used
tack and remonstrates with him.
‘Tony,’ says he, ‘I can make
allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does
come upon a man better than I do, and no man perhaps has a better right to =
know
it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there=
are
bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the present
occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.’
‘This is strong language, William Guppy,=
’
returns Mr Weevle.
‘Sir, it may be,’ retorts Mr Willi=
am
Guppy, ‘but I feel strongly when I use it.’
Mr Weevle admits that he has been wrong and be=
gs Mr
William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr William Guppy, however, having =
got
the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
remonstrance.
‘No! Dash it, Tony,’ says that gentleman, ‘you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings= of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. Y= ou, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could= say the same--it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole gard= en is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, fa= r be it from me, I am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!’<= o:p>
Tony again entreats that the subject may be no
longer pursued, saying emphatically, ‘William Guppy, drop it!’ =
Mr
Guppy acquiesces, with the reply, ‘I never should have taken it up, T=
ony,
of my own accord.’
‘And now,’ says Tony, stirring the
fire, ‘touching this same bundle of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary
thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to
me?’
‘Very. What did he do it for?’
‘What does he do anything for? HE don't
know. Said to-day was his birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve
o'clock. He'll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all
day.’
‘He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I
hope?’
‘Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never
forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his
shop--and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and
showed 'em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung =
his
cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard=
him
a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, t=
he
only song he knows-- about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when =
he
died, or something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat aslee=
p in
his hole.’
‘And you are to go down at twelve?’=
;
‘At twelve. And as I tell you, when you =
came
it seemed to me a hundred.’
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy after
considering a little with his legs crossed, ‘he can't read yet, can h=
e?’
‘Read! He'll never read. He can make all=
the
letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them;=
he
has got on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too ol=
d to
acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk.’
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy, uncrossing =
and
recrossing his legs, ‘how do you suppose he spelt out that name of
Hawdon?’
‘He never spelt it out. You know what a
curious power of eye he has and how he has been used to employ himself in
copying things by eye alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction o=
f a
letter, and asked me what it meant.’
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy, uncrossing =
and
recrossing his legs again, ‘should you say that the original was a ma=
n's
writing or a woman's?’
‘A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slope=
s a
good deal, and the end of the letter 'n,' long and hasty.’
Mr Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during
this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross l=
eg.
As he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It ta=
kes
his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
‘Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in
this house to-night? Is there a chimney on fire?’
‘Chimney on fire!’
‘Ah!’ returns Mr Guppy. ‘See=
how
the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Conf=
ound
the stuff, it won't blow off--smears like black fat!’
They look at one another, and Tony goes listen=
ing
to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes =
back
and says it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made=
to Mr
Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
‘And it was then,’ resumes Mr Gupp=
y,
still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue
their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table,
with their heads very near together, ‘that he told you of his having
taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?’
‘That was the time, sir,’ answers
Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. ‘Whereupon I wrote a line to my
dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for
to-night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.̵=
7;
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life w=
hich
is usually assumed by Mr Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he aband=
ons
that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appear=
s to
yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
‘You are to bring the letters to your ro=
om
to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all ab=
out
them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?’ asks Mr Guppy, anxious=
ly
biting his thumb-nail.
‘You can't speak too low. Yes. That's wh=
at
he and I agreed.’
‘I tell you what, Tony--’
‘You can't speak too low,’ says To=
ny
once more. Mr Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and dr=
ops
into a whisper.
‘I tell you what. The first thing to be =
done
is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see=
the
real one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy.’
‘And suppose he detects the dummy as soo=
n as
he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred tim=
es
more likely than not,’ suggests Tony.
‘Then we'll face it out. They don't belo=
ng
to him, and they never did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands=
--a
legal friend of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be
producible, won't they?’
‘Ye-es,’ is Mr Weevle's reluctant
admission.
‘Why, Tony,’ remonstrates his frie=
nd, ‘how
you look! You don't doubt William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?’=
‘I don't suspect anything more than I kn=
ow,
William,’ returns the other gravely.
‘And what do you know?’ urges Mr
Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend's once more warning hi=
m, ‘I
tell you, you can't speak too low,’ he repeats his question without a=
ny
sound at all, forming with his lips only the words, ‘What do you know=
?’
‘I know three things. First, I know that
here we are whispering in secrecy, a pair of conspirators.’
‘Well!’ says Mr Guppy. ‘And =
we
had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be if we were do=
ing
anything else, for it's the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?=
’
‘Secondly, it's not made out to me how i=
t's
likely to be profitable, after all.’
Mr Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of =
Lady
Dedlock over the mantelshelf and replies, ‘Tony, you are asked to lea=
ve
that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve th=
at
friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be called in=
to
agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend is no fool. What's
that?’
‘It's eleven o'clock striking by the bel=
l of
Saint Paul's. Listen and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling.=
217;
Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices,
near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more
various than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is =
that
it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of
sound--strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no
substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark =
on
the sea-sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be =
that
the air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by=
one
consent to see that the door is shut.
‘Yes, Tony?’ says Mr Guppy, drawing
nearer to the fire and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. ‘You were goin=
g to
say, thirdly?’
‘It's far from a pleasant thing to be
plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you ha=
ppen
to live in it.’
‘But we are plotting nothing against him,
Tony.’
‘May be not, still I don't like it. Live
here by yourself and see how YOU like it.’
‘As to dead men, Tony,’ proceeds Mr
Guppy, evading this proposal, ‘there have been dead men in most rooms=
.’
‘I know there have, but in most rooms you
let them alone, and--and they let you alone,’ Tony answers.
The two look at each other again. Mr Guppy mak=
es a
hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service,
that he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr Weevle, by stirring=
the
fire suddenly, makes Mr Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instea=
d.
‘Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot
hanging about,’ says he. ‘Let us open the window a bit and get a
mouthful of air. It's too close.’
He raises the sash, and they both rest on the
window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are =
too
near to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looki=
ng
up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant=
carriages,
and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be
comfortable. Mr Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his
whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.
‘By the by, Tony, don't forget old
Smallweed,’ meaning the younger of that name. ‘I have not let h=
im
into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in
the family.’
‘I remember,’ says Tony. ‘I =
am
up to all that.’
‘And as to Krook,’ resumes Mr Gupp=
y. ‘Now,
do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as=
he
has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?’
Tony shakes his head. ‘I don't know. Can=
't
Imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I
shall be better informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, whe=
n he
don't know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and what that
is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper=
he
bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a monomania with him to think he=
is
possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last
quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me.’
‘How did he first come by that idea, tho=
ugh?
That's the question,’ Mr Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a li=
ttle
forensic meditation. ‘He may have found papers in something he bought,
where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd h=
ead
from the manner and place of their concealment that they are worth somethin=
g.’
‘Or he may have been taken in, in some
pretended bargain. Or he may have been muddled altogether by long staring at
whatever he
Mr Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding h=
is
head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfu=
lly
to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily dra=
ws
his hand away.
‘What, in the devil's name,’ he sa=
ys, ‘is
this! Look at my fingers!’
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is
offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnan=
t,
sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudde=
r.
‘What have you been doing here? What have
you been pouring out of window?’
‘I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swe=
ar!
Never, since I have been here!’ cries the lodger.
And yet look here--and look here! When he brin=
gs
the candle here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and cr=
eeps
away down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
‘This is a horrible house,’ says Mr
Guppy, shutting down the window. ‘Give me some water or I shall cut my
hand off.’
He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells,
and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and
stood silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and all
those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the
dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says=
, ‘It's
the appointed time at last. Shall I go?’
Mr Guppy nods and gives him a ‘lucky tou=
ch’
on the back, but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.
He goes downstairs, and Mr Guppy tries to comp=
ose
himself before the fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minu=
te
or two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
‘Have you got them?’
‘Got them! No. The old man's not there.&=
#8217;
He has been so horribly frightened in the short
interval that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks
loudly, ‘What's the matter?’
‘I couldn't make him hear, and I softly
opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot=
is
there, and the oil is there--and he is not there!’ Tony ends this wit=
h a
groan.
Mr Guppy takes the light. They go down, more d=
ead
than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. T=
he
cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at somethin=
g on
the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, =
but
there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy
coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so
rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back hang the
old man's hairy cap and coat.
‘Look!’ whispers the lodger, point=
ing
his friend's attention to these objects with a trembling finger. ‘I t=
old
you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundl=
e of
old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there alre=
ady,
for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left
him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled
black thing is upon the floor.’
Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
‘See!’ whispers Tony. ‘At the
foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they ti=
e up
pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and
laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I sa=
w it
fall.’
‘What's the matter with the cat?’ =
says
Mr Guppy. ‘Look at her!’
‘Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil
place.’
They advance slowly, looking at all these thin=
gs.
The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the
ground before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
light.
Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here =
is
the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual,
seeming to be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O=
h,
horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away, striking out the light=
and
overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.
Help, help, help! Come into this house for
heaven's sake! Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor =
of
that court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lo=
rd
chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under all na=
mes
soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call t=
he
death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say=
it
might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally--inb=
orn,
inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and
that only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that ca=
n be
died.
Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about=
the
cuffs and buttons who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms
reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breath=
lessly
fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions
through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and write with ravenous
little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the
night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midni=
ght,
thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the
following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will
doubtless be remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created=
in
the public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the f=
irst
floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop=
, by
an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named
Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the inqu=
est,
which it may be recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a
well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question on the
west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr James George
Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible) how during some hou=
rs
of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants =
of
the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that
present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful tha=
t Mr
Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr J. G. Bogsby, has him=
self
stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a lady of =
some
pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by Mr J. G. Bogsby to sing=
at
a series of concerts called Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would
appear are held at the Sol's Arms under Mr Bogsby's direction pursuant to t=
he
Act of George the Second, that he (Mr Swills) found his voice seriously
affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression at the
time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he hadn't a single no=
te
in him. How this account of Mr Swills is entirely corroborated by two
intelligent married females residing in the same court and known respective=
ly
by the names of Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid
effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupa=
tion
of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two
gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastr=
ophe
write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a
moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's Arms parlour, to behold the tops=
of
their heads while they are about it.
The whole court, adult as well as boy, is
sleepless for that night, and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and
talk of the ill- fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely
rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a =
bed
at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts its door all
night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for the Sol and causes =
the
court to stand in need of comfort. The house has not done so much in the
stomachic article of cloves or in brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. =
The
moment the pot-boy heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves =
tight
to his shoulders and said, ‘There'll be a run upon us!’ In the
first outcry, young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in
triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on =
to
that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and torch=
es.
One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all chinks and
crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in company with one =
of
the two policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. To this tr=
io
everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate desire to exh=
ibit
hospitality in a liquid form.
Mr Weevle and his friend Mr Guppy are within t=
he
bar at the Sol and are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if t=
hey
will only stay there. ‘This is not a time,’ says Mr Bogsby, =
216;to
haggle about money,’ though he looks something sharply after it, over=
the
counter; ‘give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to
whatever you put a name to.’
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr Weevle
especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it
difficult to put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still rel=
ate
to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of what
they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, one or othe=
r of
the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing it open a little way =
at
the full length of his arm, looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any
suspicions, but that he may as well know what they are up to in there.
Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding =
the
court still out of bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being
treated, still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little
money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating steps
departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a
despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to le=
ssen
the darkness. Thus the day cometh, whether or no.
And the day may discern, even with its dim Lon=
don
eye, that the court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that ha=
ve
fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors inste=
ad
of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks wo=
rn
and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of wh=
at
has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the t=
wo
policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the
court) have enough to do to keep the door.
‘Good gracious, gentlemen!’ says Mr
Snagsby, coming up. ‘What's this I hear!’
‘Why, it's true,’ returns one of t=
he
policemen. ‘That's what it is. Now move on here, come!’
‘Why, good gracious, gentlemen,’ s=
ays Mr
Snagsby, somewhat promptly backed away, ‘I was at this door last night
betwixt ten and eleven o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges
here.’
‘Indeed?’ returns the policeman. &=
#8216;You
will find the young man next door then. Now move on here, some of you,̵=
7;
‘Not hurt, I hope?’ says Mr Snagsb=
y.
‘Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!’
Mr Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any
question in his troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr Weevle
languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him of
exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
‘And Mr Guppy likewise!’ quoth Mr
Snagsby. ‘Dear, dear, dear! What a fate there seems in all this! And =
my
lit--’
Mr Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the
formation of the words ‘my little woman.’ For to see that injur=
ed
female walk into the Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before
the beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, stri=
kes
him dumb.
‘My dear,’ says Mr Snagsby when hi=
s tongue
is loosened, ‘will you take anything? A little--not to put too fine a
point upon it--drop of shrub?’
‘No,’ says Mrs Snagsby.
‘My love, you know these two gentlemen?&=
#8217;
‘Yes!’ says Mrs Snagsby, and in a
rigid manner acknowledges their presence, still fixing Mr Snagsby with her =
eye.
The devoted Mr Snagsby cannot bear this treatm=
ent.
He takes Mrs Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
‘My little woman, why do you look at me =
in
that way? Pray don't do it.’
‘I can't help my looks,’ says Mrs
Snagsby, ‘and if I could I wouldn't.’
Mr Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoin=
s, ‘Wouldn't
you really, my dear?’ and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble=
and
says, ‘This is a dreadful mystery, my love!’ still fearfully
disconcerted by Mrs Snagsby's eye.
‘It IS,’ returns Mrs Snagsby, shak=
ing
her head, ‘a dreadful mystery.’
‘My little woman,’ urges Mr Snagsb=
y in
a piteous manner, ‘don't for goodness' sake speak to me with that bit=
ter
expression and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you n=
ot
to do it. Good Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combus=
ting
any person, my dear?’
‘I can't say,’ returns Mrs Snagsby=
.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position,=
Mr
Snagsby ‘can't say’ either. He is not prepared positively to de=
ny
that he may have had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't
know what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it =
is
possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present
transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief and gasps.=
‘My life,’ says the unhappy statio=
ner,
‘would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so
delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before
breakfast?’
‘Why do YOU come here?’ inquires M=
rs
Snagsby.
‘My dear, merely to know the rights of t=
he
fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has
been--combusted.’ Mr Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. =
8216;I
should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll.’=
;
‘I dare say you would! You relate everyt=
hing
to me, Mr Snagsby.’
‘Every--my lit--’
‘I should be glad,’ says Mrs Snags=
by
after contemplating his increased confusion with a severe and sinister smil=
e, ‘if
you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr Snagsby, th=
an
anywhere else.’
‘My love, I don't know but what I may be=
, I
am sure. I am ready to go.’
Mr Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the b=
ar,
gives Messrs. Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfacti=
on
with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs Snagsby from the Sol=
's
Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some
inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole
neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs Snagsby's pertinacit=
y in
that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains
wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cle=
ared
if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy, having taken their
breakfast, step into Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square a=
nd
clear as many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.=
‘There can be no more favourable time th=
an
the present, Tony,’ says Mr Guppy after they have broodingly made out=
the
four sides of the square, ‘for a word or two between us upon a point =
on
which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding.’
‘Now, I tell you what, William G.!’
returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot eye. ‘If it'=
s a
point of conspiracy, you needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had
enough of that, and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking
fire next or blowing up with a bang.’
This supposititious phenomenon is so very
disagreeable to Mr Guppy that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, &=
#8216;Tony,
I should have thought that what we went through last night would have been a
lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.’ To
which Mr Weevle returns, ‘William, I should have thought it would have
been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you lived.’=
; To
which Mr Guppy says, ‘Who's conspiring?’ To which Mr Jobling
replies, ‘Why, YOU are!’ To which Mr Guppy retorts, ‘No, =
I am
not.’ To which Mr Jobling retorts again, ‘Yes, you are!’ =
To
which Mr Guppy retorts, ‘Who says so?’ To which Mr Jobling reto=
rts,
‘I say so!’ To which Mr Guppy retorts, ‘Oh, indeed?’=
; To
which Mr Jobling retorts, ‘Yes, indeed!’ And both being now in a
heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy then, ‘=
;if
you heard your friend out instead of flying at him, you wouldn't fall into
mistakes. But your temper is hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing =
in
yourself, Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye--’
‘Oh! Blow the eye!’ cries Mr Weevl=
e,
cutting him short. ‘Say what you have got to say!’
Finding his friend in this morose and material
condition, Mr Guppy only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through t=
he
tone of injury in which he recommences, ‘Tony, when I say there is a
point on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite
apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is
professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what facts t=
he
witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that we should know wh=
at
facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old
mo--gentleman?’ (Mr Guppy was going to say ‘mogul,’ but
thinks ‘gentleman’ better suited to the circumstances.)
‘What facts? THE facts.’
‘The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those
are’--Mr Guppy tells them off on his fingers--’what we knew of =
his
habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery t=
hat
we made, and how we made it.’
‘Yes,’ says Mr Weevle. ‘Those
are about the facts.’
‘We made the discovery in consequence of=
his
having, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at
night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done
before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening wi=
th
you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being only into the
circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary to go
beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?’
‘No!’ returns Mr Weevle. ‘I
suppose not.’
‘And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?&=
#8217;
says the injured Guppy.
‘No,’ returns his friend; ‘if
it's nothing worse than this, I withdraw the observation.’
‘Now, Tony,’ says Mr Guppy, taking=
his
arm again and walking him slowly on, ‘I should like to know, in a
friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
continuing to live at that place?’
‘What do you mean?’ says Tony,
stopping.
‘Whether you have yet thought over the m=
any
advantages of your continuing to live at that place?’ repeats Mr Gupp=
y,
walking him on again.
‘At what place? THAT place?’ point=
ing
in the direction of the rag and bottle shop. Mr Guppy nods.
‘Why, I wouldn't pass another night there
for any consideration that you could offer me,’ says Mr Weevle, hagga=
rdly
staring.
‘Do you mean it though, Tony?’
‘Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I f=
eel
as if I do; I know that,’ says Mr Weevle with a very genuine shudder.=
‘Then the possibility or probability--for
such it must be considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of
those effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no rela=
tion
in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he real=
ly
had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at all against last night, To=
ny,
if I understand you?’ says Mr Guppy, biting his thumb with the appeti=
te
of vexation.
‘Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of=
a
fellow's living there?’ cries Mr Weevle indignantly. ‘Go and li=
ve
there yourself.’
‘Oh! I, Tony!’ says Mr Guppy, soot=
hing
him. ‘I have never lived there and couldn't get a lodging there now,
whereas you have got one.’
‘You are welcome to it,’ rejoins h=
is
friend, ‘and--ugh!--you may make yourself at home in it.’
‘Then you really and truly at this point=
,’
says Mr Guppy, ‘give up the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?=
8217;
‘You never,’ returns Tony with a m=
ost
convincing steadfastness, ‘said a truer word in all your life. I do!&=
#8217;
While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach
drives into the square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes
itself manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so
manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for t=
he
coach stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr Smallweed and Mrs
Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
An air of haste and excitement pervades the pa=
rty,
and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr
Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr Guppy, =
216;How
de do, sir! How de do!’
‘What do Chick and his family want here =
at
this time of the morning, I wonder!’ says Mr Guppy, nodding to his
familiar.
‘My dear sir,’ cries Grandfather
Smallweed, ‘would you do me a favour? Would you and your friend be so
very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while Bart
and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that =
good
turn, sir?’
Mr Guppy looks at his friend, repeating
inquiringly, ‘The public- house in the court?’ And they prepare=
to
bear the venerable burden to the Sol's Arms.
‘There's your fare!’ says the
patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist=
at
him. ‘Ask me for a penny more, and I'll have my lawful revenge upon y=
ou.
My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you ro=
und
the neck. I won't squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear m=
e!
Oh, my bones!’
It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr
Weevle presents an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is
accomplished. With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the
utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, h=
e fulils
his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by=
his
own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
‘Oh, Lord!’ gasps Mr Smallweed,
looking about him, breathless, from an arm-chair. ‘Oh, dear me! Oh, my
bones and back! Oh, my aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing,
shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!’
This little apostrophe to Mrs Smallweed is
occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she
finds herself on her feet to amble about and ‘set’ to inanimate
objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance.=
A
nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations as a=
ny
imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the present occasion they =
are
so particularly lively in connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to t=
hat
in which Mr Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her
grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing
upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of ‘a pig-head=
ed
jackdaw,’ repeated a surprising number of times.
‘My dear sir,’ Grandfather Smallwe=
ed
then proceeds, addressing Mr Guppy, ‘there has been a calamity here. =
Have
you heard of it, either of you?’
‘Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it=
.’
‘You discovered it. You two discovered i=
t!
Bart, THEY discovered it!’
The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, w=
ho
return the compliment.
‘My dear friends,’ whines Grandfat=
her
Smallweed, putting out both his hands, ‘I owe you a thousand thanks f=
or
discharging the melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs Smallweed=
's
brother.’
‘Eh?’ says Mr Guppy.
‘Mrs Smallweed's brother, my dear
friend--her only relation. We were not on terms, which is to be deplored no=
w,
but he never WOULD be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he=
was
very eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I sh=
all
take out letters of administration. I have come down to look after the
property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I have come down,R=
17;
repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten
fingers at once, ‘to look after the property.’
‘I think, Small,’ says the
disconsolate Mr Guppy, ‘you might have mentioned that the old man was
your uncle.’
‘You two were so close about him that I
thought you would like me to be the same,’ returns that old bird with=
a
secretly glistening eye. ‘Besides, I wasn't proud of him.’
‘Besides which, it was nothing to you, y=
ou
know, whether he was or not,’ says Judy. Also with a secretly glisten=
ing
eye.
‘He never saw me in his life to know me,=
’
observed Small; ‘I don't know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!&=
#8217;
‘No, he never communicated with us, whic=
h is
to be deplored,’ the old gentleman strikes in, ‘but I have come=
to
look after the property--to look over the papers, and to look after the
property. We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor.=
Mr
Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to =
act
as my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye. Krook =
was Mrs
Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no
relation but Mrs Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone bl=
ack-
beetle, that was seventy-six years of age.’
Mrs Smallweed instantly begins to shake her he=
ad
and pipe up, ‘Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six
thousand bags of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of
bank- notes!’
‘Will somebody give me a quart pot?̵=
7;
exclaims her exasperated husband, looking helplessly about him and finding =
no
missile within his reach. ‘Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? =
Will
somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you ca=
t,
you dog, you brimstone barker!’ Here Mr Smallweed, wrought up to the
highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her grandmother=
in
default of anything else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with
such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.
‘Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so
good,’ says the voice from within the faintly struggling bundle into
which he has collapsed. ‘I have come to look after the property. Shak=
e me
up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to abo=
ut
the property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the property.
Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch the property!R=
17;
As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and putting him through t=
he
usual restorative process of shaking and punching, he still repeats like an
echo, ‘The--the property! The property! Property!’
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy look at each other, the
former as having relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfit=
ed
countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. But ther=
e is
nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed interest. Mr Tulkinghorn's
clerk comes down from his official pew in the chambers to mention to the po=
lice
that Mr Tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next =
of
kin and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in=
due
time and course. Mr Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert his
supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next house and
upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bir=
d of
prey newly added to her aviary.
The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking
wind in the court still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its
mettle. Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there
really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him
out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members of that restle=
ss
juvenile circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane,
crumble into ashes behind the pump and under the archway all day long, where
wild yells and hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Mi=
ss
M. Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling =
that
these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals and
non-professionals. Mr Bogsby puts up ‘The popular song of King Death,
with chorus by the whole strength of the company,’ as the great Harmo=
nic
feature of the week and announces in the bill that ‘J. G. B. is induc=
ed
to do so at a considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has
been very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable
individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has aroused so m=
uch
sensation.’ There is one point connected with the deceased upon which=
the
court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized cof=
fin
should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the under=
taker's
stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that he has received orde=
rs
to construct ‘a six-footer,’ the general solicitude is much
relieved, and it is considered that Mr Smallweed's conduct does him great
honour.
Out of the court, and a long way out of it, th=
ere
is considerable excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to l=
ook,
and carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same inten=
t,
and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hy=
drogen
than the court has ever imagined. Some of these authorities (of course the
wisest) hold with indignation that the deceased had no business to die in t=
he
alleged manner; and being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry
into the evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the
Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English
medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess
Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of Veron=
a,
who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard of in his time =
as
having gleams of reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere=
and
Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject; and furthe=
r, of
the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French
surgeon once upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where
such a case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard =
the
late Mr Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as
wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court understan=
ds
of all this, the more the court likes it, and the greater enjoyment it has =
in
the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms. Then there comes the artist of a pict=
ure
newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wr=
eck
on the Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, a=
nd
in Mrs Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws in u=
pon
the block Mr Krook's house, as large as life; in fact, considerably larger,
making a very temple of it. Similarly, being permitted to look in at the do=
or
of the fatal chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile
long by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed. All t=
his
time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and
assist at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to
everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and writing with
the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like=
as
before, except that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the com=
mon
way and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that R=
16;that
would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; b=
ut
so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't account for!̵=
7;
After which the six-footer comes into action and is much admired.
In all these proceedings Mr Guppy has so sligh=
t a
part, except when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private
individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has=
the
mortification of seeing Mr Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly
knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings draw to a clos=
e,
that is to say, on the night next after the catastrophe, Mr Guppy has a thi=
ng
to say that must be said to Lady Dedlock.
For which reason, with a sinking heart and with
that hang-dog sense of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in =
the
Sol's Arms have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himse=
lf
at the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests to s=
ee
her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; don't he see=
the
carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage at the door; but he wan=
ts
to see my Lady too.
Mercury is disposed, as he will presently decl=
are
to a fellow- gentleman in waiting, ‘to pitch into the young man’=
;;
but his instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the y=
oung
man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young man in a large
room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.
Mr Guppy looks into the shade in all direction=
s,
discovering everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but fair f=
lesh
and blood, most brilliantly dressed.
‘I have to beg your ladyship's pardon,=
8217;
Mr Guppy stammers, very downcast. ‘This is an inconvenient time--R=
17;
‘I told you, you could come at any time.=
’
She takes a chair, looking straight at him as on the last occasion.
‘Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is v=
ery
affable.’
‘You can sit down.’ There is not m=
uch
affability in her tone.
‘I don't know, your ladyship, that it's
worth while my sitting down and detaining you, for I--I have not got the
letters that I mentioned when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship.=
’
‘Have you come merely to say so?’<= o:p>
‘Merely to say so, your ladyship.’=
Mr
Guppy besides being depressed, disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further
disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance.
She knows its influence perfectly, has studied=
it
too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. 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 the letters are destroyed with the
person?’
Mr Guppy would say no if he could--as he is un=
able
to hide.
‘I believe so, your ladyship.’
If he could see the least sparkle of relief in=
her
face now? No, he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not
utterly put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
He falters an awkward excuse or two for his
failure.
‘Is this all you have to say?’
inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him out--or as nearly out as he can
stumble.
Mr Guppy thinks that's all.
‘You had better be sure that you wish to=
say
nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity.=
’
Mr Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no s=
uch
wish at present, by any means.
‘That is enough. I will dispense with
excuses. Good evening to you!’ And she rings for Mercury to show the
young man of the name of Guppy out.
But in that house, in that same moment, there
happens to be an old man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, comi=
ng
with his quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young man as =
he
is leaving the room.
One glance between the old man and the lady, a=
nd
for an instant the blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and
sharp, looks out. Another instant, close again.
‘I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg =
your
pardon a thousand times. It is so very unusual to find you here at this hou=
r. I
supposed the room was empty. I beg your pardon!’
‘Stay!’ She negligently calls him
back. ‘Remain here, I beg. I am going out to dinner. I have nothing m=
ore
to say to this young man!’
The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes ou=
t,
and cringingly hopes that Mr Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
‘Aye, aye?’ says the lawyer, looki=
ng
at him from under his bent brows, though he has no need to look again--not =
he. ‘From
Kenge and Carboy's, surely?’
‘Kenge and Carboy's, Mr Tulkinghorn. Nam=
e of
Guppy, sir.’
‘To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr Guppy, I=
am
very well!’
‘Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too
well, sir, for the credit of the profession.’
‘Thank you, Mr Guppy!’
Mr Guppy sneaks away. Mr Tulkinghorn, such a f=
oil
in his old- fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her d=
own
the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a g=
ood
deal in the course of the evening.
‘Now, what,’ says Mr George, ̵=
6;may
this be? Is it blank cartridge or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?’=
;
An open letter is the subject of the trooper's
speculations, and it seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's
length, brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his
left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that side,=
contracts
his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy himself. He smooths it out
upon the table with his heavy palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the
gallery, makes a halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a f=
resh
eye. Even that won't do. ‘Is it,’ Mr George still muses, ‘=
;blank
cartridge or ball?’
Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-=
pot,
is employed in the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in
quick-march time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back
again to the girl he left behind him.
‘Phil!’ The trooper beckons as he
calls him.
Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off =
at
first as if he were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his
commander like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high rel=
ief
upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the
brush.
‘Attention, Phil! Listen to this.’=
‘Steady, commander, steady.’
‘'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though th=
ere
is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at t=
wo
months' date drawn on yourself by Mr Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, f=
or
the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due
to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on
presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' What do you make of that, Phil?R=
17;
‘Mischief, guv'ner.’
‘Why?’
‘I think,’ replies Phil after
pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his forehead with the brush-handle=
, ‘that
mischeevious consequences is always meant when money's asked for.’
‘Lookye, Phil,’ says the trooper, sitting on the table. ‘First and last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in interest and one thing and another.’<= o:p>
Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, =
with
a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the
transaction as being made more promising by this incident.
‘And lookye further, Phil,’ says t=
he
trooper, staying his premature conclusions with a wave of his hand. ‘=
There
has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call
renewed. And it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?̵=
7;
‘I say that I think the times is come to=
a
end at last.’
‘You do? Humph! I am much of the same mi=
nd
myself.’
‘Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought
here in a chair?’
‘The same.’
‘Guv'ner,’ says Phil with exceeding
gravity, ‘he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in
his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.’
Having thus expressively uttered his sentiment=
s, Mr
Squod, after waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expecte=
d of
him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has in hand
and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium that he must and=
he
will return to that ideal young lady. George, having folded the letter, wal=
ks
in that direction.
‘There IS a way, commander,’ says
Phil, looking cunningly at him, ‘of settling this.’
‘Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I
could.’
Phil shakes his head. ‘No, guv'ner, no; =
not
so bad as that. There IS a way,’ says Phil with a highly artistic tur=
n of
his brush; ‘what I'm a-doing at present.’
‘Whitewashing.’
Phil nods.
‘A pretty way that would be! Do you know
what would become of the Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ru=
ined
to pay off my old scores? YOU'RE a moral character,’ says the trooper,
eyeing him in his large way with no small indignation; ‘upon my life =
you
are, Phil!’
Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course =
of
protesting earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his bru=
sh
and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb, that he h=
ad
forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much as injure a hair =
of
the head of any member of that worthy family when steps are audible in the =
long
passage without, and a cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is =
at
home. Phil, with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, ‘Here's the
guv'ner, Mrs Bagnet! Here he is!’ and the old girl herself, accompani=
ed
by Mr Bagnet, appears.
The old girl never appears in walking trim, in=
any
season of the year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but ve=
ry
clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so interesting=
to Mr
Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from another quarter of the gl=
obe
in company with Mrs Bagnet and an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is
also invariably a part of the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no
colour known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, w=
ith
a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model of a
fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a pair of
spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious capacity of stic=
king
to its post that might be desired in an article long associated with the
British army. The old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and see=
ms
to be in need of stays--an appearance that is possibly referable to its hav=
ing
served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a
carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her
well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the instrumen=
t as
a wand with which to point out joints of meat or bunches of greens in marke=
ting
or to arrest the attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her mar=
ket-
basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never st=
irs
abroad. Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest sunb=
urnt
face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs Bagnet now arrives,
fresh-coloured and bright, in George's Shooting Gallery.
‘Well, George, old fellow,’ says s=
he, ‘and
how do YOU do, this sunshiny morning?’
Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs
Bagnet draws a long breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Ha=
ving
a faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such positio=
ns,
of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her
bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfect=
ly
comfortable.
Mr Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with
his old comrade and with Phil, on whom Mrs Bagnet likewise bestows a
good-humoured nod and smile.
‘Now, George,’ said Mrs Bagnet
briskly, ‘here we are, Lignum and myself’--she often speaks of =
her
husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae
having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, =
in
compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy--’=
;just
looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Gi=
ve
him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it like a man.’
‘I was coming to you this morning,’
observes the trooper reluctantly.
‘Yes, we thought you'd come to us this
morning, but we turned out early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mi=
nd
his sisters and came to you instead--as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so c=
lose
now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's the
matter, George?’ asks Mrs Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. R=
16;You
don't look yourself.’
‘I am not quite myself,’ returns t=
he
trooper; ‘I have been a little put out, Mrs Bagnet.’
Her bright quick eye catches the truth directl=
y. ‘George!’
holding up her forefinger. ‘Don't tell me there's anything wrong about
that security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the children!=
’
The trooper looks at her with a troubled visag=
e.
‘George,’ says Mrs Bagnet, using b=
oth
her arms for emphasis and occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her
knees. ‘If you have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of
Lignum's, and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in dang=
er
of being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as
print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly. I tell
you, cruelly, George. There!’
Mr Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or=
a
lamp-post, puts his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to
defend it from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs Bagnet.=
‘George,’ says that old girl, R=
16;I
wonder at you! George, I am ashamed of you! George, I couldn't have believed
you would have done it! I always knew you to be a rolling stone that gather=
ed
no moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little moss the=
re
was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a hard-working,
steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta and Woolwich are, a=
nd I
never did think you would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so. Oh,
George!’ Mrs Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very
genuine manner, ‘How could you do it?’
Mrs Bagnet ceasing, Mr Bagnet removes his hand
from his head as if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr
George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak
and straw bonnet.
‘Mat,’ says the trooper in a subdu=
ed
voice, addressing him but still looking at his wife, ‘I am sorry you =
take
it so much to heart, because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I
certainly have, this morning, received this letter’--which he reads
aloud--’but I hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, wh=
y,
what you say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's
way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it's impossible =
for
an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family better than I like 'em,
Mat, and I trust you'll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don't think
I've kept anything from you. I haven't had the letter more than a quarter o=
f an
hour.’
‘Old girl,’ murmurs Mr Bagnet afte=
r a
short silence, ‘will you tell him my opinion?’
‘Oh! Why didn't he marry,’ Mrs Bag=
net
answers, half laughing and half crying, ‘Joe Pouch's widder in North
America? Then he wouldn't have got himself into these troubles.’
‘The old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet, =
8216;puts
it correct--why didn't you?’
‘Well, she has a better husband by this
time, I hope,’ returns the trooper. ‘Anyhow, here I stand, this
present day, NOT married to Joe Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see al=
l I
have got about me. It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell =
off
every morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum
wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe that I'll leave you or yo=
urs
in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself first. I only wish,’ says the troo=
per,
giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, ‘that I knew of any o=
ne
who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores.’ ‘Old girl,=
8217;
murmurs Mr Bagnet, ‘give him another bit of my mind.’
‘George,’ says the old girl, ̵=
6;you
are not so much to be blamed, on full consideration, except for ever taking
this business without the means.’
‘And that was like me!’ observes t=
he penitent
trooper, shaking his head. ‘Like me, I know.’
‘Silence! The old girl,’ says Mr
Bagnet, ‘is correct--in her way of giving my opinions--hear me out!=
8217;
‘That was when you never ought to have a=
sked
for the security, George, and when you never ought to have got it, all thin=
gs
considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an honourable a=
nd
straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, though a little fligh=
ty.
On the other hand, you can't admit but what it's natural in us to be anxious
with such a thing hanging over our heads. So forget and forgive all round,
George. Come! Forget and forgive all round!’
Mrs Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands=
and
giving her husband the other, Mr George gives each of them one of his and h=
olds
them while he speaks.
‘I do assure you both, there's nothing I
wouldn't do to discharge this obligation. But whatever I have been able to
scrape together has gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived
plainly enough here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was
expected of it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. It was wrong in =
me
to take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step, an=
d I
thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to overlook my ha=
ving
such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very
much ashamed of myself.’ With these concluding words, Mr George gives=
a
shake to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or
two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confess=
ion
and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.
‘George, hear me out!’ says Mr Bag=
net,
glancing at his wife. ‘Old girl, go on!’
Mr Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard
out, has merely to observe that the letter must be attended to without any
delay, that it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr
Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold harmle=
ss Mr
Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr George, entirely assenting, puts on h=
is
hat and prepares to march with Mr Bagnet to the enemy's camp.
‘Don't you mind a woman's hasty word,
George,’ says Mrs Bagnet, patting him on the shoulder. ‘I trust=
my
old Lignum to you, and I am sure you'll bring him through it.’
The trooper returns that this is kindly said a=
nd
that he WILL bring Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs Bagnet, with h=
er
cloak, basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of h=
er
family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of mollifying Mr
Smallweed.
Whether there are two people in England less
likely to come satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr Smallweed than=
Mr
George and Mr Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned. Also, notwi=
thstanding
their martial appearance, broad square shoulders, and heavy tread, whether
there are within the same limits two more simple and unaccustomed children =
in
all the Smallweedy affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity thro=
ugh
the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr Bagnet, observing his
companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer to Mrs
Bagnet's late sally.
‘George, you know the old girl--she's as
sweet and as mild as milk. But touch her on the children--or myself--and sh=
e's
off like gunpowder.’
‘It does her credit, Mat!’
‘George,’ says Mr Bagnet, looking
straight before him, ‘the old girl--can't do anything--that don't do =
her
credit. More or less. I never say so. Discipline must be maintained.’=
‘She's worth her weight in gold,’ =
says
the trooper.
‘In gold?’ says Mr Bagnet. ‘=
I'll
tell you what. The old girl's weight--is twelve stone six. Would I take that
weight--in any metal--for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's
metal is far more precious--than the preciousest metal. And she's
‘You are right, Mat!’
‘When she took me--and accepted of the
ring--she 'listed under me and the children--heart and head, for life. She's
that earnest,’ says Mr Bagnet, ‘and true to her colours--that,
touch us with a finger--and she turns out--and stands to her arms. If the o=
ld
girl fires wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it, George. =
For
she's loyal!’
‘Why, bless her, Mat,’ returns the
trooper, ‘I think the higher of her for it!’
‘You are right!’ says Mr Bagnet wi=
th
the warmest enthusiasm, though without relaxing the rigidity of a single
muscle. ‘Think as high of the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and
still you'll be thinking low--of such merits. But I never own to it before =
her.
Discipline must be maintained.’
These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant a=
nd
to Grandfather Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy,
who, having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but in=
deed
with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she consults the
oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred to give consent fr=
om
the circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips that they
can come in if they want to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr
Smallweed with his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper
foot-bath and Mrs Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is n=
ot
to sing.
‘My dear friend,’ says Grandfather
Smallweed with those two lean affectionate arms of his stretched forth. =
216;How
de do? How de do? Who is our friend, my dear friend?’
‘Why this,’ returns George, not ab=
le
to be very conciliatory at first, ‘is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged=
me
in that matter of ours, you know.’
‘Oh! Mr Bagnet? Surely!’ The old m=
an
looks at him under his hand.
‘Hope you're well, Mr Bagnet? Fine man, =
Mr
George! Military air, sir!’
No chairs being offered, Mr George brings one
forward for Bagnet and one for himself. They sit down, Mr Bagnet as if he h=
ad
no power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.
‘Judy,’ says Mr Smallweed, ‘=
bring
the pipe.’
‘Why, I don't know,’ Mr George
interposes, ‘that the young woman need give herself that trouble, for=
to
tell you the truth, I am not inclined to smoke it to-day.’
‘Ain't you?’ returns the old man. =
‘Judy,
bring the pipe.’
‘The fact is, Mr Smallweed,’ proce=
eds
George, ‘that I find myself in rather an unpleasant state of mind. It
appears to me, sir, that your friend in the city has been playing tricks.=
8217;
‘Oh, dear no!’ says Grandfather
Smallweed. ‘He never does that!’
‘Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it,
because I thought it might be HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. =
This
letter.’
Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly wa=
y in
recognition of the letter.
‘What does it mean?’ asks Mr Georg=
e.
‘Judy,’ says the old man. ‘H=
ave
you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did you say what does it mean, my good fri=
end?’
‘Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr
Smallweed,’ urges the trooper, constraining himself to speak as smoot=
hly
and confidentially as he can, holding the open letter in one hand and resti=
ng
the broad knuckles of the other on his thigh, ‘a good lot of money has
passed between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are b=
oth
well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am prepared to do =
the
usual thing which I have done regularly and to keep this matter going. I ne=
ver
got a letter like this from you before, and I have been a little put about =
by
it this morning, because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had
none of the money--’
‘I DON'T know it, you know,’ says =
the
old man quietly.
‘Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell =
you
so, don't I?’
‘Oh, yes, you tell me so,’ returns
Grandfather Smallweed. ‘But I don't know it.’
‘Well!’ says the trooper, swallowi=
ng
his fire. ‘I know it.’
Mr Smallweed replies with excellent temper, =
8216;Ah!
That's quite another thing!’ And adds, ‘But it don't matter. Mr
Bagnet's situation is all one, whether or no.’
The unfortunate George makes a great effort to
arrange the affair comfortably and to propitiate Mr Smallweed by taking him
upon his own terms.
‘That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr
Smallweed, here's Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you
see, that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for wher=
eas
I'm a harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence
come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now, Mr
Smallweed,’ says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds in his
soldierly mode of doing business, ‘although you and I are good friends
enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I can't ask you to =
let
my friend Bagnet off entirely.’
‘Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can A=
SK
me anything, Mr George.’ (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in
Grandfather Smallweed to-day.)
‘And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not
you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!’
‘Ha ha ha!’ echoes Grandfather
Smallweed. In such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green t=
hat Mr
Bagnet's natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that
venerable man.
‘Come!’ says the sanguine George. =
‘I
am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasant=
ly.
Here's my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot=
, if
you please, Mr Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend Bagne=
t's
mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just mention to him what=
our
understanding is.’
Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking
manner, ‘Oh, good gracious! Oh!’ Unless, indeed, it be the spor=
tive
Judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but
whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt.=
Mr
Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.
‘But I think you asked me, Mr GeorgeR=
17;--old
Smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker n=
ow--’I
think you asked me, what did the letter mean?’
‘Why, yes, I did,’ returns the tro=
oper
in his off-hand way, ‘but I don't care to know particularly, if it's =
all
correct and pleasant.’
Mr Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an =
aim
at the trooper's head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to piece=
s.
‘That's what it means, my dear friend. I=
'll
smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!’
The two friends rise and look at one another. =
Mr
Bagnet's gravity has now attained its profoundest point.
‘Go to the devil!’ repeats the old
man. ‘I'll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What?
You're an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you
have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my =
dear
friend, there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these blu=
sterers
out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!’
He vociferates this so loudly that Mr Bagnet,
laying his hands on the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can reco=
ver
from his amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is in=
stantly
slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr George awhile stands
looking at the knocker. Mr Bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up =
and
down before the little parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time=
he
passes, apparently revolving something in his mind.
‘Come, Mat,’ says Mr George when he
has recovered himself, ‘we must try the lawyer. Now, what do you thin=
k of
this rascal?’
Mr Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look in=
to
the parlour, replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, &=
#8216;If
my old girl had been here--I'd have told him!’ Having so discharged
himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and marches o=
ff
with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.
When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, Mr Tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all will=
ing
to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his b=
ell
being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings forth no
more encouraging message than that Mr Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them
and they had better not wait. They do wait, however, with the perseverance =
of
military tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in posses=
sion
comes out of Mr Tulkinghorn's room.
The client is a handsome old lady, no other th=
an Mrs
Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary wit=
h a
fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated with so=
me
distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to show her through t=
he
outer office and to let her out. The old lady is thanking him for his atten=
tion
when she observes the comrades in waiting.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I think tho=
se
gentlemen are military?’
The clerk referring the question to them with =
his
eye, and Mr George not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. =
Mr
Bagnet takes upon himself to reply, ‘Yes, ma'am. Formerly.’
‘I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart
warms, gentlemen, at the sight of you. It always does at the sight of such.=
God
bless you, gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who =
went
for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold way, thou=
gh
some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask your pardon for tro=
ubling
you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!’
‘Same to you, ma'am!’ returns Mr
Bagnet with right good will.
There is something very touching in the
earnestness of the old lady's voice and in the tremble that goes through her
quaint old figure. But Mr George is so occupied with the almanac over the
fire-place (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not l=
ook
round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her.
‘George,’ Mr Bagnet gruffly whispe= rs when he does turn from the almanac at last. ‘Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why--should we be melancholy, boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!’<= o:p>
The clerk having now again gone in to say that
they are still there and Mr Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some
irascibility, ‘Let 'em come in then!’ they pass into the great =
room
with the painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.
‘Now, you men, what do you want? Sergean=
t, I
told you the last time I saw you that I don't desire your company here.R=
17;
Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few
minutes as to his usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual
carriage--that he has received this letter, has been to Mr Smallweed about =
it,
and has been referred there.
‘I have nothing to say to you,’
rejoins Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘If you get into debt, you must pay your debt=
s or
take the consequences. You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I
suppose?’
Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepar=
ed
with the money.
‘Very well! Then the other man--this man=
, if
this is he--must pay it for you.’
Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is=
not
prepared with the money either.
‘Very well! Then you must pay it between=
you
or you must both be sued for it and both suffer. You have had the money and
must refund it. You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and
pence and escape scot-free.’
The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and sti=
rs
the fire. Mr George hopes he will have the goodness to--
‘I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to=
say
to you. I don't like your associates and don't want you here. This matter is
not at all in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr Smallweed is
good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. You m=
ust
go to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn.’
‘I must make an apology to you, sir,R=
17;
says Mr George, ‘for pressing myself upon you with so little
encouragement--which is almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but
would you let me say a private word to you?’
Mr Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his poc=
kets
and walks into one of the window recesses. ‘Now! I have no time to wa=
ste.’
In the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp =
look
at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the light and to =
have
the other with his face towards it.
‘Well, sir,’ says Mr George, ̵=
6;this
man with me is the other party implicated in this unfortunate
affair--nominally, only nominally-- and my sole object is to prevent his
getting into trouble on my account. He is a most respectable man with a wife
and family, formerly in the Royal Artillery--’
‘My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff
for the whole Royal Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggo=
ns,
horses, guns, and ammunition.’
‘'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal
for Bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. And if I co=
uld
bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up
without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other day.’=
‘Have you got it here?’
‘I have got it here, sir.’
‘Sergeant,’ the lawyer proceeds in=
his
dry passionless manner, far more hopeless in the dealing with than any amou=
nt
of vehemence, ‘make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is fi=
nal.
After I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re- o=
pen
it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you h=
ave
brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. In =
case
you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you--I can replace this matt=
er
on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written
undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until y=
ou
have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhaust=
ed
before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have=
you
decided?’
The trooper puts his hand into his breast and
answers with a long breath, ‘I must do it, sir.’
So Mr Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, =
sits
down and writes the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagn=
et,
who has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand on =
his
bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in
need of the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. The trooper th=
en takes
from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand=
at
the lawyer's elbow. ‘'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The las=
t I
ever had from him.’
Look at a millstone, Mr George, for some chang=
e in
its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr
Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in
his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.
Nor has he anything more to say or do but to n=
od
once in the same frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, ‘=
You
can go. Show these men out, there!’ Being shown out, they repair to Mr
Bagnet's residence to dine.
Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's
variety on the former repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs Bagnet serv=
es
out the meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being =
that
rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint tha=
t it
might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her.
The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow of Mr George; he is unusually
thoughtful and depressed. At first Mrs Bagnet trusts to the combined
endearments of Quebec and Malta to restore him, but finding those young lad=
ies
sensible that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolic=
some
acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to deploy at
leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.
But he does not. He remains in close order,
clouded and depressed. During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process,
when he and Mr Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he
was at dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his
pipe out, fills the breast of Mr Bagnet with perturbation and dismay by sho=
wing
that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.
Therefore when Mrs Bagnet at last appears, rosy
from the invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr Bagnet growls, =
8216;Old
girl!’ and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter.
‘Why, George!’ says Mrs Bagnet,
quietly threading her needle. ‘How low you are!’
‘Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afra=
id I
am not.’
‘He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!=
217;
cries little Malta.
‘Because he ain't well, I think, mother,=
’
adds Quebec.
‘Sure that's a bad sign not to be like
Bluffy, too!’ returns the trooper, kissing the young damsels. ‘=
But
it's true,’ with a sigh, ‘true, I am afraid. These little ones =
are
always right!’
‘George,’ says Mrs Bagnet, working
busily, ‘if I thought you cross enough to think of anything that a sh=
rill
old soldier's wife--who could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and oug=
ht
to have done it almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't sa=
y to
you now.’
‘My kind soul of a darling,’ retur=
ns
the trooper. ‘Not a morsel of it.’
‘Because really and truly, George, what I
said and meant to say was that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd b=
ring
him through it. And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!’
‘Thankee, my dear!’ says George. &=
#8216;I
am glad of your good opinion.’
In giving Mrs Bagnet's hand, with her work in =
it,
a friendly shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention=
is
attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she plies =
her
needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in the corner, and
beckons that fifer to him.
‘See there, my boy,’ says George, =
very
gently smoothing the mother's hair with his hand, ‘there's a good lov=
ing
forehead for you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by =
the
sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of =
you,
but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree.’
Mr Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its
wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence.
‘The time will come, my boy,’ purs=
ues
the trooper, ‘when this hair of your mother's will be grey, and this
forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'=
ll
be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, =
'I
never whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful line in =
her
face!' For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man,=
you
had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!’
Mr George concludes by rising from his chair,
seating the boy beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hu=
rry
about him, that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.
I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual
tenor of my life became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effec=
t of
time so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness and
inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many days, everyt=
hing
else seemed to have retired into a remote distance where there was little o=
r no
separation between the various stages of my life which had been really divi=
ded
by years. In falling ill, I seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have =
left
all my experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy
shore.
My housekeeping duties, though at first it cau=
sed
me great anxiety to think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off =
as
the oldest of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I w=
ent
home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish shadow at =
my
side, to my godmother's house. I had never known before how short life real=
ly
was and into how small a space the mind could put it.
While I was very ill, the way in which these
divisions of time became confused with one another distressed my mind excee=
dingly.
At once a child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as=
, I
was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each station, b=
ut
by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile them. I suppose th=
at
few who have not been in such a condition can quite understand what I mean =
or
what painful unrest arose from this source.
For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint=
at
that time in my disorder--it seemed one long night, but I believe there were
both nights and days in it--when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever
striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in a gard=
en
path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew perfectly at interva=
ls,
and I think vaguely at most times, that I was in my bed; and I talked with
Charley, and felt her touch, and knew her very well; yet I would find myself
complaining, ‘Oh, more of these never-ending stairs, Charley--more and
more--piled up to the sky', I think!’ and labouring on again.
Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung
together somewhere in great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or r=
ing,
or starry circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my
only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such inexplic=
able
agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?
Perhaps the less I say of these sick experienc=
es,
the less tedious and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them=
to
make others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering th=
em.
It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we might be the
better able to alleviate their intensity.
The repose that succeeded, the long delicious
sleep, the blissful rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any ca=
re
for myself and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with =
no
other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind--this state =
can
be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when I first shrunk =
from
the light as it twinkled on me once more, and knew with a boundless joy for
which no words are rapturous enough that I should see again.
I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and
night; I had heard her calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her;=
I
had heard her praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me an=
d to
leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak, ‘N=
ever,
my sweet girl, never!’ and I had over and over again reminded Charley
that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived or died. Char=
ley
had been true to me in that time of need, and with her little hand and her
great heart had kept the door fast.
But now, my sight strengthening and the glorio=
us
light coming every day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the lett=
ers
that my dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my
lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could see my
little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two rooms setting
everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from the open window aga=
in.
I could understand the stillness in the house and the thoughtfulness it
expressed on the part of all those who had always been so good to me. I cou=
ld
weep in the exquisite felicity of my heart and be as happy in my weakness as
ever I had been in my strength.
By and by my strength began to be restored.
Instead of lying, with so strange a calmness, watching what was done for me=
, as
if it were done for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it=
a
little, and so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to
myself, and interested, and attached to life again.
How well I remember the pleasant afternoon whe=
n I
was raised in bed with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drin=
king
with Charley! The little creature--sent into the world, surely, to minister=
to
the weak and sick--was so happy, and so busy, and stopped so often in her
preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and fondle me, and cry with joy=
ful
tears she was so glad, she was so glad, that I was obliged to say, ‘C=
harley,
if you go on in this way, I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker
than I thought I was!’ So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took=
her
bright face here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade
into the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I
watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and the pr=
etty
tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its white cloth, and =
its
flowers, and everything so lovingly and beautifully arranged for me by Ada
downstairs, was ready at the bedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say
something to Charley that was not new to my thoughts.
First I complimented Charley on the room, and
indeed it was so fresh and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce
believe I had been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face
was brighter than before.
‘Yet, Charley,’ said I, looking ro=
und,
‘I miss something, surely, that I am accustomed to?’
Poor little Charley looked round too and prete=
nded
to shake her head as if there were nothing absent.
‘Are the pictures all as they used to be=
?’
I asked her.
‘Every one of them, miss,’ said
Charley.
‘And the furniture, Charley?’
‘Except where I have moved it about to m=
ake
more room, miss.’
‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I miss s=
ome
familiar object. Ah, I know what it is, Charley! It's the looking-glass.=
217;
Charley got up from the table, making as if she
had forgotten something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob
there.
I had thought of this very often. I was now
certain of it. I could thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called
Charley back, and when she came--at first pretending to smile, but as she d=
rew
nearer to me, looking grieved--I took her in my arms and said, ‘It
matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face very well=
.’
I was presently so far advanced as to be able =
to
sit up in a great chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room,
leaning on Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room t=
oo,
but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.
My guardian had throughout been earnest to vis=
it
me, and there was now no good reason why I should deny myself that happines=
s.
He came one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his
embrace and say, ‘My dear, dear girl!’ I had long known--who co=
uld
know better?--what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his heart wa=
s;
and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to fill such a place in
it? ‘Oh, yes!’ I thought. ‘He has seen me, and he loves me
better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of me than he was bef=
ore;
and what have I to mourn for!’
He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me w=
ith
his arm. For a little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he
removed it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there ne=
ver
can be, a pleasanter manner.
‘My little woman,’ said he, ‘=
;what
a sad time this has been. Such an inflexible little woman, too, through all=
!’
‘Only for the best, guardian,’ sai=
d I.
‘For the best?’ he repeated tender=
ly. ‘Of
course, for the best. But here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and
miserable; here has your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early;
here has every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has
even poor Rick been writing--to ME too--in his anxiety for you!’
I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not =
of
Richard. I told him so.
‘Why, no, my dear,’ he replied. =
8216;I
have thought it better not to mention it to her.’
‘And you speak of his writing to YOU,=
217;
said I, repeating his emphasis. ‘As if it were not natural for him to=
do
so, guardian; as if he could write to a better friend!’
‘He thinks he could, my love,’
returned my guardian, ‘and to many a better. The truth is, he wrote t=
o me
under a sort of protest while unable to write to you with any hope of an
answer--wrote coldly, haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest litt=
le
woman, we must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and
Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes. I have
known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two angels could be
concerned in it, I believe it would change their nature.’
‘It has not changed yours, guardian.R=
17;
‘Oh, yes, it has, my dear,’ he said
laughingly. ‘It has made the south wind easterly, I don't know how of=
ten.
Rick mistrusts and suspects me--goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust =
and
suspect me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his=
and
what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the mountains of
wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so long bestowed (which=
I
can't) or could level them by the extinction of my own original right (whic=
h I
can't either, and no human power ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass
have we got), I would do it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick =
his
proper nature than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken,
heart and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the
Accountant-General--and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast into a
pyramid, in memory of Chancery's transcendent wickedness.’
‘IS it possible, guardian,’ I aske=
d,
amazed, ‘that Richard can be suspicious of you?’
‘Ah, my love, my love,’ he said, &=
#8216;it
is in the subtle poison of such abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is
infected, and objects lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS
fault.’
‘But it is a terrible misfortune, guardi=
an.’
‘It is a terrible misfortune, little wom=
an,
to be ever drawn within the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none
greater. By little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten r=
eed,
and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything around him.
But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with poor Rick and not
blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like his have I seen in my time
turned by the same means!’
I could not help expressing something of my wo=
nder
and regret that his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so
little.
‘We must not say so, Dame Durden,’=
he
cheerfully replied; ‘Ada is the happier, I hope, and that is much. I =
did
think that I and both these young creatures might be friends instead of
distrustful foes and that we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too
strong for it. But it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the
curtain of Rick's cradle.’
‘But, guardian, may we not hope that a l=
ittle
experience will teach him what a false and wretched thing it is?’
‘We WILL hope so, my Esther,’ said=
Mr
Jarndyce, ‘and that it may not teach him so too late. In any case we =
must
not be hard on him. There are not many grown and matured men living while we
speak, good men too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors
would not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years--within
two--within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so
unfortunate,’ here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking
aloud, ‘cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it=
is.
He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and
bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortu=
res
him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he st=
ill
looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and
hollow. Well, well, well! Enough of this, my dear!’
He had supported me, as at first, all this tim=
e,
and his tenderness was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his
shoulder and loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mi=
nd
in this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew strong and =
try
to set him right.
‘There are better subjects than these,=
8217;
said my guardian, ‘for such a joyful time as the time of our dear gir=
l's
recovery. And I had a commission to broach one of them as soon as I should
begin to talk. When shall Ada come to see you, my love?’
I had been thinking of that too. A little in
connexion with the absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl
would be changed by no change in my looks.
‘Dear guardian,’ said I, ‘as=
I
have shut her out so long--though indeed, indeed, she is like the light to =
me--’
‘I know it well, Dame Durden, well.̵=
7;
He was so good, his touch expressed such endea=
ring
compassion and affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort in=
to
my heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. ‘Y=
es,
yes, you are tired,’ said he. ‘Rest a little.’ ‘As I
have kept Ada out so long,’ I began afresh after a short while, ̵=
6;I
think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian. It would =
be
best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley and I were to go to =
some
country lodging as soon as I can move, and if I had a week there in which to
grow stronger and to be revived by the sweet air and to look forward to the
happiness of having Ada with me again, I think it would be better for us.=
8217;
I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish t=
o be
a little more used to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear gir=
l I
longed so ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I =
was
sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew he would
pass it over.
‘Our spoilt little woman,’ said my
guardian, ‘shall have her own way even in her inflexibility, though at
the price, I know, of tears downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, hea=
rt
of chivalry, breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper
before, that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already
turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth he'll p=
ull
it down and not leave one brick standing on another!’
And my guardian put a letter in my hand, witho=
ut
any ordinary beginning such as ‘My dear Jarndyce,’ but rushing =
at
once into the words, ‘I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and =
take
possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one o'clock, P.M=
.,’
and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most emphatic terms, going=
on
to make the extraordinary declaration he had quoted. We did not appreciate =
the
writer the less for laughing heartily over it, and we settled that I should
send him a letter of thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a mo=
st
agreeable one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should h=
ave
liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.
‘Now, little housewife,’ said my
guardian, looking at his watch, ‘I was strictly timed before I came
upstairs, for you must not be tired too soon; and my time has waned away to=
the
last minute. I have one other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour
that you were ill, made nothing of walking down here--twenty miles, poor so=
ul,
in a pair of dancing shoes--to inquire. It was heaven's mercy we were at ho=
me,
or she would have walked back again.’
The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody
seemed to be in it!
‘Now, pet,’ said my guardian, R=
16;if
it would not be irksome to you to admit the harmless little creature one
afternoon before you save Boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolitio=
n, I
believe you would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I--
though my eminent name is Jarndyce--could do in a lifetime.’
I have no doubt he knew there would be somethi=
ng
in the simple image of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a
gentle lesson on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could=
not
tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always pitied
her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little power to soo=
the
her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before.
We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out =
by
the coach and share my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my =
face
away upon my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such
blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to undergo. =
The
childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired to be industrious,
contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some one and win some love to
myself if I could came back into my mind with a reproachful sense of all the
happiness I had since enjoyed and all the affectionate hearts that had been
turned towards me. If I were weak now, what had I profited by those mercies=
? I
repeated the old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that i=
ts
old peace had not departed from it.
My guardian now came every day. In a week or so
more I could walk about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind =
the
window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage to lo=
ok
at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without her seeing me.=
On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The p=
oor
little creature ran into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and
crying from her very heart of hearts, ‘My dear Fitz Jarndyce!’ =
fell
upon my neck and kissed me twenty times.
‘Dear me!’ said she, putting her h=
and
into her reticule, ‘I have nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz
Jarndyce; I must borrow a pocket handkerchief.’
Charley gave her one, and the good creature
certainly made use of it, for she held it to her eyes with both hands and s=
at
so, shedding tears for the next ten minutes.
‘With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce,=
8217;
she was careful to explain. ‘Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you =
well
again. Pleasure at having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so =
much
fonder of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court
regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs--’
Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had bee=
n to
meet her at the place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and lo=
oked
unwilling to pursue the suggestion.
‘Ve-ry right!’ said Miss Flite, =
8216;Ve-ry
correct. Truly! Highly indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz
Jarndyce, I am afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think =
it)
a little--rambling you know,’ said Miss Flite, touching her forehead.=
‘Nothing
more.’
‘What were you going to tell me?’ =
said
I, smiling, for I saw she wanted to go on. ‘You have roused my curios=
ity,
and now you must gratify it.’
Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this
important crisis, who said, ‘If you please, ma'am, you had better tel=
l then,’
and therein gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.
‘So sagacious, our young friend,’ =
said
she to me in her mysterious way. ‘Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! We=
ll,
my dear, it's a pretty anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. W=
ho
should follow us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person i=
n a
very ungenteel bonnet--’
‘Jenny, if you please, miss,’ said
Charley.
‘Just so!’ Miss Flite acquiesced w=
ith
the greatest suavity. ‘Jenny. Ye-es! And what does she tell our young
friend but that there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage
after my dear Fitz Jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with he=
r as
a little keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you
know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!’
‘If you please, miss,’ said Charle=
y,
to whom I looked in some astonishment, ‘Jenny says that when her baby
died, you left a handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it w=
ith
the baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was you=
rs,
miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.’
‘Diminutive,’ whispered Miss Flite,
making a variety of motions about her own forehead to express intellect in
Charley. ‘But ex- ceedingly sagacious! And so dear! My love, she's
clearer than any counsel I ever heard!’
‘Yes, Charley,’ I returned. ‘=
;I
remember it. Well?’
‘Well, miss,’ said Charley, ‘=
;and
that's the handkerchief the lady took. And Jenny wants you to know that she
wouldn't have made away with it herself for a heap of money but that the la=
dy
took it and left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you
please, miss!’
‘Why, who can she be?’ said I.
‘My love,’ Miss Flite suggested,
advancing her lips to my ear with her most mysterious look, ‘in MY
opinion--don't mention this to our diminutive friend--she's the Lord
Chancellor's wife. He's married, you know. And I understand she leads him a
terrible life. Throws his lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he w=
on't
pay the jeweller!’
I did not think very much about this lady then,
for I had an impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was
diverted by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and w=
ho,
our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in arraying he=
rself
with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and a much-worn and
often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought down in a paper parcel. I
had to preside, too, over the entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a
roast fowl, a sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so
pleasant to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did
honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.
When we had finished and had our little dessert
before us, embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the
superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite was so =
very
chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her own history, as she=
was
always pleased to talk about herself. I began by saying ‘You have
attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss Flite?’
‘Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. Bu=
t I
expect a judgment. Shortly.’
There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness t=
hat
made me doubtful if I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I
would say no more about it.
‘My father expected a judgment,’ s=
aid
Miss Flite. ‘My brother. My sister. They all expected a judgment. The
same that I expect.’
‘They are all--’
‘Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear,’ =
said
she.
As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to=
try
to be serviceable to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.
‘Would it not be wiser,’ said I, &=
#8216;to
expect this judgment no more?’
‘Why, my dear,’ she answered promp=
tly,
‘of course it would!’
‘And to attend the court no more?’=
‘Equally of course,’ said she. =
216;Very
wearing to be always in expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarnd=
yce!
Wearing, I assure you, to the bone!’
She slightly showed me her arm, and it was
fearfully thin indeed.
‘But, my dear,’ she went on in her=
mysterious
way, ‘there's a dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention=
it
to our diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With go=
od
reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN'T leave it. And you
MUST expect.’
I tried to assure her that this was not so. She
heard me patiently and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.
‘Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I a=
m a
little rambling. Ve- ry absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry
confusing, too. To the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there =
many
years, and I have noticed. It's the mace and seal upon the table.’
What could they do, did she think? I mildly as=
ked
her.
‘Draw,’ returned Miss Flite. ̵=
6;Draw
people on, my dear. Draw peace out of them. Sense out of them. Good looks o=
ut
of them. Good qualities out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest =
away
in the night. Cold and glittering devils!’
She tapped me several times upon the arm and
nodded good-humouredly as if she were anxious I should understand that I ha=
d no
cause to fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful
secrets to me.
‘Let me see,’ said she. ‘I'll
tell you my own case. Before they ever drew me--before I had ever seen
them--what was it I used to do? Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and=
my
sister worked at tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's
business. We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our fat=
her
was drawn--slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he was a fierce,
sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind look for any one. He had
been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was drawn to a debtors' prison. There =
he
died. Then our brother was drawn--swiftly--to drunkenness. And rags. And de=
ath.
Then my sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in
misery, and heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work =
of
Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then I found
out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there.’
Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock = were fresh upon her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.<= o:p>
‘You don't quite credit me, my dear! Wel=
l,
well! You will, some day. I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have
seen many new faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and
seal in these many years. As my father's came there. As my brother's. As my
sister's. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of them say to =
the
new faces, 'Here's little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new here; and you must co=
me
and be presented to little Miss Flite!' Ve-ry good. Proud I am sure to have=
the
honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I kn=
ow,
far better than they do, when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my
dear. I saw them begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my lo=
ve,’
speaking low again, ‘I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in
Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to ruin.’
She looked at me in silence for some moments, =
with
her face gradually softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been
too gloomy, and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said
politely as she sipped her glass of wine, ‘Yes, my dear, as I was say=
ing,
I expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know, and
confer estates.’
I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard
and by the sad meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that
made its way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite
complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.
‘But, my dear,’ she said, gaily,
reaching another hand to put it upon mine. ‘You have not congratulate=
d me
on my physician. Positively not once, yet!’
I was obliged to confess that I did not quite =
know
what she meant.
‘My physician, Mr Woodcourt, my dear, who
was so exceedingly attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite=
gratuitously.
Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that will dissolve the spell
upon me of the mace and seal.’
‘Mr Woodcourt is so far away, now,’
said I, ‘that I thought the time for such congratulation was past, Mi=
ss
Flite.’
‘But, my child,’ she returned, =
216;is
it possible that you don't know what has happened?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘Not what everybody has been talking of,=
my
beloved Fitz Jarndyce!’
‘No,’ said I. ‘You forget how
long I have been here.’
‘True! My dear, for the moment--true. I
blame myself. But my memory has been drawn out of me, with everything else,=
by
what I mentioned. Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there h=
as
been a terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas.’
‘Mr Woodcourt shipwrecked!’
‘Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe.=
An
awful scene. Death in all shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, =
and
darkness. Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it
all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything. Saved=
many
lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped naked people in his s=
pare
clothes, took the lead, showed them what to do, governed them, tended the s=
ick,
buried the dead, and brought the poor survivors safely off at last! My dear,
the poor emaciated creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his =
feet
when they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with it.
Stay! Where's my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you shall read =
it,
you shall read it!’
And I DID read all the noble history, though v=
ery
slowly and imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see
the words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down the
long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so triumphant ever to
have known the man who had done such generous and gallant deeds, I felt such
glowing exultation in his renown, I so admired and loved what he had done, =
that
I envied the storm-worn people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as
their preserver. I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and
blessed him in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt
that no one--mother, sister, wife--could honour him more than I. I did, ind=
eed!
My poor little visitor made me a present of the
account, and when as the evening began to close in she rose to take her lea=
ve,
lest she should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still fu=
ll
of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to
understand in all its details.
‘My dear,’ said she as she careful=
ly
folded up her scarf and gloves, ‘my brave physician ought to have a t=
itle
bestowed upon him. And no doubt he will. You are of that opinion?’
That he well deserved one, yes. That he would =
ever
have one, no.
‘Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?’ she asked
rather sharply.
I said it was not the custom in England to con=
fer
titles on men distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great,
unless occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very la=
rge
amount of money.
‘Why, good gracious,’ said Miss Fl=
ite,
‘how can you say that? Surely you know, my dear, that all the greatest
ornaments of England in knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and
improvement of every sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dea=
r,
and consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don't know
that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the land!̵=
7;
I am afraid she believed what she said, for th=
ere
were moments when she was very mad indeed.
And now I must part with the little secret I h=
ave
thus far tried to keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr Woodcourt loved me
and that if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved =
me
before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done so, I sh=
ould
have been glad of it. But how much better it was now that this had never
happened! What should I have suffered if I had had to write to him and tell=
him
that the poor face he had known as mine was quite gone from me and that I f=
reely
released him from his bondage to one whom he had never seen!
Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a gr=
eat
pang mercifully spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer=
to
be all he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone=
: no
chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please God, my lo=
wly
way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler way upon its broader
road; and though we were apart upon the journey, I might aspire to meet him,
unselfishly, innocently, better far than he had thought me when I found some
favour in his eyes, at the journey's end.
Charley and I did not set off alone upon our
expedition into Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose
sight of me until I was safe in Mr Boythorn's house, so he accompanied us, =
and
we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and every scen=
t,
and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and
everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever fo=
und
it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when=
the
wide world was so full of delight for me.
My guardian intending to go back immediately, =
we
appointed, on our way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote he=
r a
letter, of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our
arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early summer-tim=
e.
If a good fairy had built the house for me wit=
h a
wave of her wand, and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I c=
ould
not have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for me =
and
such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little tastes and likings
that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen times before I had revisited =
half
the rooms. I did better than that, however, by showing them all to Charley
instead. Charley's delight calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the
garden, and Charley had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressi=
ons,
I was as tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort t=
o be
able to say to myself after tea, ‘Esther, my dear, I think you are qu=
ite
sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to your host.=
217;
He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own face, and had
confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his highest mark of
confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him in London, telling him=
how
all his favourite plants and trees were looking, and how the most astonishi=
ng
of birds had chirped the honours of the house to me in the most hospitable
manner, and how, after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture=
of
my little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage, but
whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and sent off to=
the
post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and arranging; and I sent Charle=
y to
bed in good time and told her I should want her no more that night.
For I had not yet looked in the glass and had
never asked to have my own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness whi=
ch
must be overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh
when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone, and
therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, ‘Esther, if you are to be
happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true- hearted, you must k=
eep
your word, my dear.’ I was quite resolved to keep it, but I sat down =
for
a little while first to reflect upon all my blessings. And then I said my
prayers and thought a little more. My hair had not been cut off, though it =
had
been in danger more than once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and sh=
ook
it out, and went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little
muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment looki=
ng
through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing else. Then I pu=
t my
hair aside and looked at the reflection in the mirror, encouraged by seeing=
how
placidly it looked at me. I was very much changed--oh, very, very much. At
first my face was so strange to me that I think I should have put my hands
before it and started back but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very
soon it became more familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration =
in
it better than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, bu=
t I
had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would have
surprised me.
I had never been a beauty and had never thought
myself one, but I had been very different from this. It was all gone now.
Heaven was so good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears=
and
could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.
One thing troubled me, and I considered it for=
a
long time before I went to sleep. I had kept Mr Woodcourt's flowers. When t=
hey
were withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.
Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right to
preserve what he had sent to one so different--whether it was generous towa=
rds
him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even in the secret depths of =
my
heart, which he would never know, because I could have loved him--could have
been devoted to him. At last I came to the conclusion that I might keep the=
m if
I treasured them only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gon=
e,
never to be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not
seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.
I took care to be up early in the morning and =
to
be before the glass when Charley came in on tiptoe.
‘Dear, dear, miss!’ cried Charley,
starting. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, Charley,’ said I, quietly
putting up my hair. ‘And I am very well indeed, and very happy.’=
;
I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but =
it
was a greater weight off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it.=
I
shall not conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but
they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed by me
faithfully.
Wishing to be fully re-established in my stren=
gth
and my good spirits before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of pla=
ns
with Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out bef=
ore
breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again before and after
dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea, and were to go to rest
betimes, and were to climb every hill and explore every road, lane, and fie=
ld
in the neighbourhood. As to restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr
Boythorn's good housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to e=
at
or drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the park b=
ut
she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful face shining w=
ith
a lecture on the importance of frequent nourishment. Then there was a pony
expressly for my riding, a chubby pony with a short neck and a mane all over
his eyes who could canter--when he would--so easily and quietly that he was=
a
treasure. In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I call=
ed
him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such a capi=
tal
understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and rather obstinate=
ly,
down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and said, ‘Stubbs, I am
surprised you don't canter when you know how much I like it; and I think you
might oblige me, for you are only getting stupid and going to sleep,’=
he
would give his head a comical shake or two and set off directly, while Char=
ley
would stand still and laugh with such enjoyment that her laughter was like
music. I don't know who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong =
to
him as naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and
drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but all at o=
nce,
as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take it ill that he sho=
uld
have been accompanied so far by the circle of tantalizing little gnats that=
had
been hovering round and round his ears the whole way without appearing to
advance an inch, and stopped to think about it. I suppose he came to the
decision that it was not to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until=
I
gave the reins to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a
sturdy sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his e=
ar
against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, ‘Now, Stubbs, I feel
quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride a little
while,’ for the moment I left him, he stood stock still again.
Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in this order we
returned home, to the great delight of the village.
Charley and I had reason to call it the most
friendly of villages, I am sure, for in a week's time the people were so gl=
ad
to see us go by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that the=
re
were faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown peop=
le
before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple began to wear a
familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends was an old old woman w=
ho
lived in such a little thatched and whitewashed dwelling that when the outs=
ide
shutter was turned up on its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This=
old
lady had a grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her a=
nd
drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him up and
where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was considered by the
whole village the most wonderful achievement in the world, but when an answ=
er
came back all the way from Plymouth, in which he mentioned that he was goin=
g to
take the picture all the way to America, and from America would write again=
, I
got all the credit that ought to have been given to the post- office and was
invested with the merit of the whole system.
Thus, what with being so much in the air, play=
ing
with so many children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation=
in
so many cottages, going on with Charley's education, and writing long lette=
rs
to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that little loss of
mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of it at odd moments now
and then, I had only to be busy and forget it. I felt it more than I had ho=
ped
I should once when a child said, ‘Mother, why is the lady not a pretty
lady now like she used to be?’ But when I found the child was not less
fond of me, and drew its soft hand over my face with a kind of pitying
protection in its touch, that soon set me up again. There were many little
occurrences which suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it i=
s to
gentle hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of
these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little church =
when
a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign the registe=
r.
The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed fir=
st,
made a rude cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now=
, I
had known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in
the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school, and I c=
ould
not help looking at her with some surprise. She came aside and whispered to=
me,
while tears of honest love and admiration stood in her bright eyes, ‘=
He's
a dear good fellow, miss; but he can't write yet--he's going to learn of
me--and I wouldn't shame him for the world!’ Why, what had I to fear,=
I
thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man's
daughter!
The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me=
as
it had ever blown, and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had c=
ome
into my old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so ro=
sy;
and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole night.
There was a favourite spot of mine in the
park-woods of Chesney Wold where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely
view. The wood had been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, =
and
the bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at l=
east
once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the Ghost's Walk, was
seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the startling name, and the =
old
legend in the Dedlock family which I had heard from Mr Boythorn accounting =
for
it, mingled with the view and gave it something of a mysterious interest in
addition to its real charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous=
one
for violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley's to gather wild flow=
ers,
she took as much to the spot as I did.
It would be idle to inquire now why I never we=
nt
close to the house or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had
heard on my arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious =
or
uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this place
wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a footstep really =
did
resound at times, as the story said, upon the lonely Ghost's Walk. The
indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock had impressed me may have had s=
ome
influence in keeping me from the house even when she was absent. I am not s=
ure.
Her face and figure were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say th=
at
they repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no r=
eason,
I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my story now arrive=
s.
I was resting at my favourite point after a lo=
ng
ramble, and Charley was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I h=
ad
been looking at the Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off =
and
picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it when I became
aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The perspective was so long=
and
so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of the branches on the ground made i=
t so
much more intricate to the eye, that at first I could not discern what figu=
re
it was. By little and little it revealed itself to be a woman's--a lady's--=
Lady
Dedlock's. She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step=
, I
observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.
I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so n=
ear
(she was almost within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have
risen to continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not =
so
much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick advance a=
nd
outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in her manner and the
absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a something in her face that I=
had
pined for and dreamed of when I was a little child, something I had never s=
een
in any face, something I had never seen in hers before.
A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I call=
ed
to Charley. Lady Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to
what I had known her.
‘Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have star=
tled
you,’ she said, now advancing slowly. ‘You can scarcely be stro=
ng
yet. You have been very ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it.=
’
I could no more have removed my eyes from her =
pale
face than I could have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me h=
er
hand, and its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of
her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot say wh=
at
was in my whirling thoughts.
‘You are recovering again?’ she as=
ked
kindly.
‘I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady
Dedlock.’
‘Is this your young attendant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you send her on before and walk
towards your house with me?’
‘Charley,’ said I, ‘take your
flowers home, and I will follow you directly.’
Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied=
on
her bonnet and went her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the
seat beside me.
I cannot tell in any words what the state of my
mind was when I saw in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the
dead baby.
I looked at her, but I could not see her, I co=
uld
not hear her, I could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so
violent and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when =
she
caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me, and ca=
lled
me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and cried to me, ‘=
Oh,
my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy mother! Oh, try to forgive=
me!’--when
I saw her at my feet on the bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt,
through all my tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of=
God
that I was so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of
likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her and remo=
tely
think of any near tie between us.
I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching =
her
not to stoop before me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in brok=
en,
incoherent words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see=
her
at MY feet. I told her--or I tried to tell her--that if it were for me, her
child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive her, I did it, and
had done it, many, many years. I told her that my heart overflowed with love
for her, that it was natural love which nothing in the past had changed or
could change. That it was not for me, then resting for the first time on my
mother's bosom, to take her to account for having given me life, but that my
duty was to bless her and receive her, though the whole world turned from h=
er,
and that I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, a=
nd
she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the summer=
day
there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that was not at peace=
.
‘To bless and receive me,’ groaned=
my
mother, ‘it is far too late. I must travel my dark road alone, and it
will lead me where it will. From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I=
do
not see the way before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have
brought upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.’
Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew
her habitual air of proud indifference about her like a veil, though she so=
on
cast it off again.
‘I must keep this secret, if by any mean=
s it
can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonou=
ring
creature that I am!’
These words she uttered with a suppressed cry =
of
despair, more terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with=
her
hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I should
touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any endearments I co=
uld
use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no, no, she could only speak t=
o me
so; she must be proud and disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled =
and
ashamed there, in the only natural moments of her life.
My unhappy mother told me that in my illness s=
he
had been nearly frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. =
She
could not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me do=
wn
here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could associate, nev=
er
could communicate, never probably from that time forth could interchange
another word on earth. She put into my hands a letter she had written for my
reading only and said when I had read it and destroyed it--but not so much =
for
her sake, since she asked nothing, as for her husband's and my own--I must
evermore consider her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this
agony in which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for
then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she suffered.=
She
had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help. Whether she preserved =
her
secret until death or it came to be discovered and she brought dishonour and
disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; =
and
no affection could come near her, and no human creature could render her any
aid.
‘But is the secret safe so far?’ I
asked. ‘Is it safe now, dearest mother?’
‘No,’ replied my mother. ‘It=
has
been very near discovery. It was saved by an accident. It may be lost by
another accident--to- morrow, any day.’
‘Do you dread a particular person?’=
;
‘Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for
me. I am not worthy of these tears,’ said my mother, kissing my hands=
. ‘I
dread one person very much.’
‘An enemy?’
‘Not a friend. One who is too passionles=
s to
be either. He is Sir Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful with=
out
attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of be=
ing
master of the mysteries of great houses.’
‘Has he any suspicions?’
‘Many.’
‘Not of you?’ I said alarmed.
‘Yes! He is always vigilant and always n=
ear
me. I may keep him at a standstill, but I can never shake him off.’
‘Has he so little pity or compunction?=
8217;
‘He has none, and no anger. He is
indifferent to everything but his calling. His calling is the acquisition of
secrets and the holding possession of such power as they give him, with no
sharer or opponent in it.’
‘Could you trust in him?’
‘I shall never try. The dark road I have
trodden for so many years will end where it will. I follow it alone to the =
end,
whatever the end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road last=
s,
nothing turns me.’
‘Dear mother, are you so resolved?’=
;
‘I AM resolved. I have long outbidden fo=
lly
with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, a=
nd
have outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and
outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these
woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course through it=
is
the same. I have but one; I can have but one.’
‘Mr Jarndyce--’ I was beginning wh=
en
my mother hurriedly inquired, ‘Does HE suspect?’
‘No,’ said I. ‘No, indeed! Be
assured that he does not!’ And I told her what he had related to me as
his knowledge of my story. ‘But he is so good and sensible,’ sa=
id
I, ‘that perhaps if he knew--’
My mother, who until this time had made no cha=
nge
in her position, raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.
‘Confide fully in him,’ she said a=
fter
a little while. ‘You have my free consent--a small gift from such a
mother to her injured child!--but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left =
in
me even yet.’
I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can
recall now--for my agitation and distress throughout were so great that I
scarcely understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mothe=
r's
voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I had n=
ever
learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep with, had never
heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired by, made an enduring
impression on my memory--I say I explained, or tried to do it, how I had on=
ly hoped
that Mr Jarndyce, who had been the best of fathers to me, might be able to
afford some counsel and support to her. But my mother answered no, it was
impossible; no one could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, =
she
must go alone.
‘My child, my child!’ she said. =
8216;For
the last time! These kisses for the last time! These arms upon my neck for =
the
last time! We shall meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be
what I have been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady
Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched mothe=
r,
conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the reality is in her
suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the o=
nly
love and truth of which it is capable! And then forgive her if you can, and=
cry
to heaven to forgive her, which it never can!’
We held one another for a little space yet, but
she was so firm that she took my hands away, and put them back against my
breast, and with a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went
from me into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun =
and
shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which there had
seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw it, but which now
looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of my mother's misery.
Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at firs=
t as
I had ever been in my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the
danger of discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I t=
ook
such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been crying, an=
d I
constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation that there was upon =
me
to be careful and collected. It was not a little while before I could succe=
ed
or could even restrain bursts of grief, but after an hour or so I was better
and felt that I might return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, who=
m I
found at the gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk
after Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie down.
Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from it--and that=
was
much then--that I had not been abandoned by my mother. Her elder and only
sister, the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of life in me when=
I
had been laid aside as dead, had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire=
or
willingness that I should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never ag=
ain
beheld my mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely d=
id I
hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had never=
, to
my own mother's knowledge, breathed--had been buried--had never been endowed
with life--had never borne a name. When she had first seen me in the church=
she
had been startled and had thought of what would have been like me if it had
ever lived, and had lived on, but that was all then.
What more the letter told me needs not to be
repeated here. It has its own times and places in my story.
My first care was to burn what my mother had
written and to consume even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatu=
ral
or bad in me that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been
reared. That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for =
many
people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of myself as the
danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and of a proud family nam=
e.
That I was so confused and shaken as to be possessed by a belief that it was
right and had been intended that I should die in my birth, and that it was
wrong and not intended that I should be then alive.
These are the real feelings that I had. I fell
asleep worn out, and when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in
the world with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frighten=
ed
of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the owner =
of
Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old words now moaning =
in
my ear like a surge upon the shore, ‘Your mother, Esther, was your
disgrace, and you are hers. The time will come--and soon enough--when you w=
ill
understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.=
8217;
With them, those other words returned, ‘Pray daily that the sins of
others be not visited upon your head.’ I could not disentangle all th=
at
was about me, and I felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and =
the
visitation had come down.
The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast =
and
sad, and I still contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and af=
ter
walking a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees=
and
the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me, was attra=
cted
to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not have gone near it if I=
had
been in a stronger frame of mind. As it was, I took the path that led close=
by
it.
I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I
passed before the terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad wa=
lks,
and its well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it
was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights of
shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the trained moss and
ivy grew about them, and around the old stone pedestal of the sun-dial; and=
I
heard the fountain falling. Then the way went by long lines of dark windows
diversified by turreted towers and porches of eccentric shapes, where old s=
tone
lions and grotesque monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at=
the
evening gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path
wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the principal
entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables where none but deep
voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of the wind through the strong
mass of ivy holding to a high red wall, or in the low complaining of the
weathercock, or in the barking of the dogs, or in the slow striking of a cl=
ock.
So, encountering presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could h=
ear,
I turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there above me
were the balustrades of the Ghost's Walk and one lighted window that might =
be
my mother's.
The way was paved here, like the terrace overh=
ead,
and my footsteps from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags.
Stopping to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was pass=
ing
quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted window, whe=
n my
echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful
truth in the legend of the Ghost's Walk, that it was I who was to bring
calamity upon the stately house and that my warning feet were haunting it e=
ven
then. Seized with an augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran
from myself and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never
paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and black
behind me.
Not before I was alone in my own room for the
night and had again been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how
wrong and thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on t=
he
morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation that I mu=
st
have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my guardian, too, I found
another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden, if I should see that little
woman anywhere, that they had moped most pitiably without her, that the
housekeeping was going to rack and ruin, that nobody else could manage the
keys, and that everybody in and about the house declared it was not the same
house and was becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together
made me think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought=
to
be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me, as it ough=
t to
have done before, into a better condition.
For I saw very well that I could not have been
intended to die, or I should never have lived; not to say should never have
been reserved for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had wo=
rked
together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were sometimes
visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I had in the morning
feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my birth as a queen of hers and
that before my Heavenly Father I should not be punished for birth nor a que=
en
rewarded for it. I had had experience, in the shock of that very day, that I
could, even thus soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had
fallen on me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in the=
m,
pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling that =
the
darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my sleep; and when
the next day's light awoke me, it was gone.
My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in =
the
afternoon. How to help myself through the intermediate time better than by
taking a long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know;=
so
Charley and I and Stubbs--Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him after the =
one
great occasion--made a long expedition along that road and back. On our ret=
urn,
we held a great review of the house and garden and saw that everything was =
in
its prettiest condition, and had the bird out ready as an important part of=
the
establishment.
There were more than two full hours yet to ela=
pse
before she could come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must
confess I was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling =
so
well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any one. I w=
as
not in this slight distress because I at all repined--I am quite certain I =
did
not, that day--but, I thought, would she be wholly prepared? When she first=
saw
me, might she not be a little shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a
little worse than she expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and n=
ot
find her? Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again=
?
I knew the various expressions of my sweet gir=
l's
face so well, and it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was =
sure
beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I considered
whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings, which was so very
likely, could I quite answer for myself?
Well, I thought I could. After last night, I
thought I could. But to wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and
think, was such bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again =
and
meet her.
So I said to Charley, ‘Charley, I will g=
o by
myself and walk along the road until she comes.’ Charley highly appro=
ving
of anything that pleased me, I went and left her at home.
But before I got to the second milestone, I had
been in so many palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I kne=
w it
was not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back and =
go
home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the coach coming up
behind me (though I still knew that it neither would, nor could, do any such
thing) that I ran the greater part of the way to avoid being overtaken.
Then, I considered, when I had got safe back
again, this was a nice thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the w=
orst
of it instead of the best.
At last, when I believed there was at least a
quarter of an hour more yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was
trembling in the garden, ‘Here she comes, miss! Here she is!’
I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs in=
to
my room and hid myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when =
I heard
my darling calling as she came upstairs, ‘Esther, my dear, my love, w=
here
are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!’
She ran in, and was running out again when she=
saw
me. Ah, my angel girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all
affection. Nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing!
Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with=
my
sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her
lovely cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a
child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and pressin=
g me
to her faithful heart.
If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I m=
ust
have confided it to Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mi=
ne,
and I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unle=
ss
some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my present
duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my dear, I did not
want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though often when she was asleep
and all was quiet, the remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the
night sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me wh=
at I
used to be--except, of course, in that particular of which I have said enou=
gh
and which I have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help
it.
The difficulty that I felt in being quite comp=
osed
that first evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at =
the
house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock
had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great. Greater
still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied that she had =
been
kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance,
remarked upon her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. But Charley
helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only
stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to visit at some other
great house in the next county and that she had left early on the morning a=
fter
we had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage ab=
out
little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a d=
ay
than would have come to my ears in a month.
We were to stay a month at Mr Boythorn's. My p=
et
had scarcely been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one
evening after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,=
and
just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very important =
air
behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the room.
‘Oh! If you please, miss,’ said
Charley in a whisper, with her eyes at their roundest and largest. ‘Y=
ou're
wanted at the Dedlock Arms.’
‘Why, Charley,’ said I, ‘who=
can
possibly want me at the public- house?’
‘I don't know, miss,’ returned
Charley, putting her head forward and folding her hands tight upon the band=
of
her little apron, which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysteri=
ous
or confidential, ‘but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and
will you please to come without saying anything about it.’
‘Whose compliments, Charley?’
‘His'n, miss,’ returned Charley, w=
hose
grammatical education was advancing, but not very rapidly.
‘And how do you come to be the messenger,
Charley?’
‘I am not the messenger, if you please,
miss,’ returned my little maid. ‘It was W. Grubble, miss.’=
;
‘And who is W. Grubble, Charley?’<= o:p>
‘Mister Grubble, miss,’ returned
Charley. ‘Don't you know, miss? The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble,̵=
7;
which Charley delivered as if she were slowly spelling out the sign.
‘Aye? The landlord, Charley?’
‘Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wif=
e is
a beautiful woman, but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her
brother's the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll
drink himself to death entirely on beer,’ said Charley.
Not knowing what might be the matter, and being
easily apprehensive now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I
bade Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put =
them
on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at home as =
in Mr
Boythorn's garden.
Mr Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at
the door of his very clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his =
hat
with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an
iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded passage to h=
is
best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in it than were quite
convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline, several shells, a good many
tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious =
egg
or a curious pumpkin (but I don't know which, and I doubt if many people di=
d)
hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr Grubble very well by sight, from his of=
ten
standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man who nev=
er
seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own fire-side without his=
hat
and top-boots, but who never wore a coat except at church.
He snuffed the candle, and backing away a litt=
le
to see how it looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was
going to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour
being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I thought, which
stopped. A quick light step approached the room in which I was, and who sho=
uld
stand before me but Richard!
‘My dear Esther!’ he said. ‘=
My
best friend!’ And he really was so warm-hearted and earnest that in t=
he
first surprise and pleasure of his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find
breath to tell him that Ada was well.
‘Answering my very thoughts--always the =
same
dear girl!’ said Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself
beside me.
I put my veil up, but not quite.
‘Always the same dear girl!’ said
Richard just as heartily as before.
I put up my veil altogether, and laying my han=
d on
Richard's sleeve and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him f=
or
his kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because=
of
the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to him.
‘My love,’ said Richard, ‘th=
ere
is no one with whom I have a greater wish to talk than you, for I want you =
to
understand me.’
‘And I want you, Richard,’ said I,
shaking my head, ‘to understand some one else.’
‘Since you refer so immediately to John
Jarndyce,’ said Richard, ‘--I suppose you mean him?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then I may say at once that I am glad of
it, because it is on that subject that I am anxious to be understood. By yo=
u,
mind--you, my dear! I am not accountable to Mr Jarndyce or Mr Anybody.̵=
7;
I was pained to find him taking this tone, and=
he
observed it.
‘Well, well, my dear,’ said Richar=
d, ‘we
won't go into that now. I want to appear quietly in your country-house here,
with you under my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose yo=
ur
loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?’
‘My dear Richard,’ I returned, =
216;you
know you would be heartily welcome at his house--your home, if you will but
consider it so; and you are as heartily welcome here!’
‘Spoken like the best of little women!=
8217;
cried Richard gaily.
I asked him how he liked his profession.
‘Oh, I like it well enough!’ said
Richard. ‘It's all right. It does as well as anything else, for a tim=
e. I
don't know that I shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can =
sell
out then and--however, never mind all that botheration at present.’
So young and handsome, and in all respects so
perfectly the opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeki=
ng
look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!
‘I am in town on leave just now,’ =
said
Richard.
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. I have run over to look after my--=
my
Chancery interests before the long vacation,’ said Richard, forcing a
careless laugh. ‘We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at
last, I promise you.’
No wonder that I shook my head!
‘As you say, it's not a pleasant subject=
.’
Richard spoke with the same shade crossing his face as before. ‘Let i=
t go
to the four winds for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?&=
#8217;
‘Was it Mr Skimpole's voice I heard?R=
17;
‘That's the man! He does me more good th=
an
anybody. What a fascinating child it is!’
I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming
down together. He answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear o=
ld
infant--so he called Mr Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told him wher=
e we
were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on coming to see us, =
and
the dear old infant had directly wanted to come too; and so he had brought =
him.
‘And he is worth--not to say his sordid expenses--but thrice his weig=
ht
in gold,’ said Richard. ‘He is such a cheery fellow. No worldli=
ness
about him. Fresh and green-hearted!’
I certainly did not see the proof of Mr Skimpo=
le's
worldliness in his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark
about that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed =
to
see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and sympathy at
intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so happy as in hearin=
g of
my progress, began to understand the mixture of good and evil in the world =
now,
felt that he appreciated health the more when somebody else was ill, didn't
know but what it might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to m=
ake
B happier in looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D
better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.
‘My dear Miss Summerson, here is our fri=
end
Richard,’ said Mr Skimpole, ‘full of the brightest visions of t=
he
future, which he evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delight=
ful,
that's inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods and solit=
udes
were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping and dancing of Pan=
and
the nymphs. This present shepherd, our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull
Inns of Court by making Fortune and her train sport through them to the
melodious notes of a judgment from the bench. That's very pleasant, you kno=
w!
Some ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of these
legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?' I reply, 'My growling
friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There is a
shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly
fascinating to my simplicity. I don't say it is for this that they exist--f=
or I
am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to y=
ou
or myself for anything--but it may be so.'‘
I began seriously to think that Richard could
scarcely have found a worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at suc=
h a
time when he most required some right principle and purpose he should have =
this
captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing w=
ith
all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how s=
uch
a nature as my guardian's, experienced in the world and forced to contempla=
te
the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an
immense relief in Mr Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of
guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as=
it
seemed or that it did not serve Mr Skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any
other part, and with less trouble.
They both walked back with me, and Mr Skimpole
leaving us at the gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, ‘Ad=
a,
my love, I have brought a gentleman to visit you.’ It was not difficu=
lt
to read the blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, =
and
I knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only=
.
I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wi=
cked
in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He
admired her very much--any one must have done that--and I dare say would ha=
ve
renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but that he k=
new
how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still I had a tormenting =
idea
that the influence upon him extended even here, that he was postponing his =
best
truth and earnestness in this as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce
should be off his mind. Ah me! What Richard would have been without that
blight, I never shall know now!
He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he
had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather
too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr Jarndyce, that he had c=
ome
openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for the present term=
s on
which he stood with Mr Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us
directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when =
he
might set himself right through the means of an unreserved conversation with
me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was
arranged. Mr Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hou=
r.
He particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and told
her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the busi=
ness
in his power and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get=
set
up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good d=
eal
of employment in his way.
‘For I am constantly being taken in these
nets,’ said Mr Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of
wine-and-water, ‘and am constantly being bailed out--like a boat. Or =
paid
off--like a ship's company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, =
you
know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebo=
dy's
means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who
somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to somebody. God
bless him!’
Richard was a little late in the morning, but I
had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. The air was brig=
ht
and dewy and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the spar=
kles
in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of t=
he
woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the s=
till
night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all
the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual
for the glory of that day.
‘This is a lovely place,’ said
Richard, looking round. ‘None of the jar and discord of law-suits her=
e!’
But there was other trouble.
‘I tell you what, my dear girl,’ s=
aid
Richard, ‘when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down he=
re,
I think, and rest.’
‘Would it not be better to rest now?R=
17;
I asked.
‘Oh, as to resting NOW,’ said Rich=
ard,
‘or as to doing anything very definite NOW, that's not easy. In short=
, it
can't be done; I can't do it at least.’
‘Why not?’ said I.
‘You know why not, Esther. If you were
living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off-=
-to
be from top to bottom pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next we=
ek,
next month, next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. N=
ow?
There's no now for us suitors.’
I could almost have believed in the attraction=
on
which my poor little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the
darkened look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of
that unfortunate man who had died.
‘My dear Richard,’ said I, ‘=
this
is a bad beginning of our conversation.’
‘I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durde=
n.’
‘And not I alone, dear Richard. It was n=
ot I
who cautioned you once never to found a hope or expectation on the family
curse.’
‘There you come back to John Jarndyce!=
8217;
said Richard impatiently. ‘Well! We must approach him sooner or later,
for he is the staple of what I have to say, and it's as well at once. My de=
ar
Esther, how can you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested par=
ty
and that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit,
and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well for me?R=
17;
‘Oh, Richard,’ I remonstrated, =
216;is
it possible that you can ever have seen him and heard him, that you can ever
have lived under his roof and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in
this solitary place where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspici=
ons?’
He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosi=
ty
felt a pang of reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied=
in
a subdued voice, ‘Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean fel=
low
and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in
one of my years.’
‘I know it very well,’ said I. =
216;I
am not more sure of anything.’
‘That's a dear girl,’ retorted
Richard, ‘and like you, because it gives me comfort. I had need to get
some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it's a bad one at the b=
est,
as I have no occasion to tell you.’
‘I know perfectly,’ said I. ‘=
;I
know as well, Richard--what shall I say? as well as you do--that such
misconstructions are foreign to your nature. And I know, as well as you kno=
w,
what so changes it.’
‘Come, sister, come,’ said Richard=
a
little more gaily, ‘you will be fair with me at all events. If I have=
the
misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted
me, it may have a little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an
honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he =
is.
But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him s=
ay
so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?’
‘Because,’ said I, ‘his is an
uncommon character, and he has resolutely kept himself outside the circle,
Richard.’
‘Oh, because and because!’ replied
Richard in his vivacious way. ‘I am not sure, my dear girl, but that =
it
may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause
other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may
die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may
smoothly happen that are convenient enough.’
I was so touched with pity for Richard that I
could not reproach him any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian's
gentleness towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment=
he
had spoken of them.
‘Esther,’ Richard resumed, ‘=
you
are not to suppose that I have come here to make underhanded charges against
John Jarndyce. I have only come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all
very well and we got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of =
this
same suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look into
it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce discovers that Ada =
and
I must break off and that if I don't amend that very objectionable course, =
I am
not fit for her. Now, Esther, I don't mean to amend that very objectionable
course: I will not hold John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of
compromise, which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or
displeases him, I must maintain my rights and Ada's. I have been thinking a=
bout
it a good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to.’
Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking
about it a good deal. His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too
plainly.
‘So I tell him honourably (you are to kn=
ow I
have written to him about all this) that we are at issue and that we had be=
tter
be at issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his
protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our roads are=
not
the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should take much more than h=
e. I
don't mean to say that it is the one to be established, but there it is, an=
d it
has its chance.’
‘I have not to learn from you, my dear
Richard,’ said I, ‘of your letter. I had heard of it already
without an offended or angry word.’
‘Indeed?’ replied Richard, softeni=
ng. ‘I
am glad I said he was an honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. B=
ut I
always say that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these
views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you tell =
her
what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the case as I have, if=
you
had only applied yourself to the papers as I did when I was at Kenge's, if =
you
only knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicio=
ns
and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in comparis=
on.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said I. ‘But do
you think that, among those many papers, there is much truth and justice,
Richard?’
‘There is truth and justice somewhere in=
the
case, Esther--’
‘Or was once, long ago,’ said I.
‘Is--is--must be somewhere,’ pursu=
ed
Richard impetuously, ‘and must be brought out. To allow Ada to be mad=
e a
bribe and hush-money of is not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is
changing me; John Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change
everybody who has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side
when I resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end.’
‘All you can, Richard! Do you think that=
in
these many years no others have done all they could? Has the difficulty gro=
wn
easier because of so many failures?’
‘It can't last for ever,’ returned
Richard with a fierceness kindling in him which again presented to me that =
last
sad reminder. ‘I am young and earnest, and energy and determination h=
ave
done wonders many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I
devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life.’
‘Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse=
, so
much the worse!’
‘No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me,=
’
he returned affectionately. ‘You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed
girl; but you have your prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I
tell you, my good Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found =
so
convenient, we were not on natural terms.’
‘Are division and animosity your natural
terms, Richard?’
‘No, I don't say that. I mean that all t=
his
business puts us on unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incom=
patible.
See another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over that I h=
ave
been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am free of it,
and I may then agree with what you say to- day. Very well. Then I shall
acknowledge it and make him reparation.’
Everything postponed to that imaginary time!
Everything held in confusion and indecision until then!
‘Now, my best of confidantes,’ said
Richard, ‘I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious,
fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and re=
ason
at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a
great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the
course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and-- and in short,’
said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, ‘I--I don't
like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character=
to
a confiding girl like Ada.’
I told him that he was more like himself in th=
ose
latter words than in anything he had said yet.
‘Why,’ acknowledged Richard, ̵=
6;that
may be true enough, my love. I rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able=
to
give myself fair- play by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don't=
you
be afraid.’
I asked him if this were all he wished me to t=
ell
Ada.
‘Not quite,’ said Richard. ‘=
I am
bound not to withhold from her that John Jarndyce answered my letter in his
usual manner, addressing me as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my
opinions, and telling me that they should make no difference in him. (All v=
ery
well of course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if=
I
see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as my own=
--we
two being in the same boat exactly--and that I hope she will not suppose fr=
om
any flying rumours she may hear that I am at all light-headed or imprudent;=
on
the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the suit, a=
nd
always planning in that direction. Being of age now and having taken the st=
ep I
have taken, I consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce;
but Ada being still a ward of the court, I don't yet ask her to renew our
engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself once more
and we shall both be in very different worldly circumstances, I believe. If=
you
tell her all this with the advantage of your considerate way, you will do m=
e a
very great and a very kind service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarnd=
yce
and Jarndyce on the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrec=
y at
Bleak House.’
‘Richard,’ said I, ‘you place
great confidence in me, but I fear you will not take advice from me?’=
‘It's impossible that I can on this subj=
ect,
my dear girl. On any other, readily.’
As if there were any other in his life! As if =
his
whole career and character were not being dyed one colour!
‘But I may ask you a question, Richard?&=
#8217;
‘I think so,’ said he, laughing. &=
#8216;I
don't know who may not, if you may not.’
‘You say, yourself, you are not leading =
a very
settled life.’
‘How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing
settled!’
‘Are you in debt again?’
‘Why, of course I am,’ said Richar=
d,
astonished at my simplicity.
‘Is it of course?’
‘My dear child, certainly. I can't throw
myself into an object so completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps=
you
don't know, that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's o=
nly
a question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within the ma=
rk
any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,’ said Richard, quite am=
used
with me, ‘I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my dear!’=
I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in whi=
ch
he stood that I tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every
fervent means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some=
of
his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and gentleness, b=
ut
it all rebounded from him without taking the least effect. I could not wond=
er
at this after the reception his preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's
letter, but I determined to try Ada's influence yet.
So when our walk brought us round to the villa=
ge
again, and I went home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was g=
oing
to give her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard w=
as
losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made her very
unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater reliance on his
correcting his errors than I could have--which was so natural and loving in=
my
dear!--and she presently wrote him this little letter:
My dearest cousin,
Esther has told me all you said to her this
morning. I write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said=
to
you and to let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find ou=
r cousin
John a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply, dee=
ply
grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much wrong.
I do not quite know how to write what I wish to
say next, but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have some fear=
s,
my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up =
so
much unhappiness for yourself--and if for yourself, for me. In case this sh=
ould
be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are
doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. You can do nothing f=
or
my sake that will make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon =
the
shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying this.
Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural
repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both
orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. We have re=
ason
to know by this time that there is no good in it and no hope, that there is
nothing to be got from it but sorrow.
My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say
that you are quite free and that it is very likely you may find some one wh=
om
you will love much better than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you wi=
ll
let me say so, that the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow
your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, do=
ing
your duty and pursuing your chosen way, than to have the hope of being, or =
even
to be, very rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost of
dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of your indifference to o=
ther
aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little knowle=
dge
or experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own heart.
Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionat=
e
Ada
This note brought Richard to us very soon, but=
it
made little change in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was rig=
ht
and who was wrong--he would show us--we should see! He was animated and
glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but I could only hope, w=
ith
a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect upon his mind on
re-perusal than it assuredly had then.
As they were to remain with us that day and had
taken their places to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportu=
nity
of speaking to Mr Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way,
and I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging Richar=
d.
‘Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?=
’
he repeated, catching at the word with the pleasantest smile. ‘I am t=
he
last man in the world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life-=
-I
can't be.’
‘I am afraid everybody is obliged to be,=
’
said I timidly enough, he being so much older and more clever than I.
‘No, really?’ said Mr Skimpole,
receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. R=
16;But
every man's not obliged to be solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear =
Miss
Summerson,’ he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his
pocket, ‘there's so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have n=
ot
the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence--call it four pound nine.
They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as muc=
h as
good-natured people will let me owe. If they don't stop, why should I? There
you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that's responsibility, I am responsi=
ble.’
The perfect ease of manner with which he put t=
he
money up again and looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he =
had
been mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me f=
eel
as if he really had nothing to do with it.
‘Now, when you mention responsibility,=
8217;
he resumed, ‘I am disposed to say that I never had the happiness of
knowing any one whom I should consider so refreshingly responsible as yours=
elf.
You appear to me to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see yo=
u,
my dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole little=
orderly
system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined to say to myself--in fa=
ct I
do say to myself very often-- THAT'S responsibility!’
It was difficult, after this, to explain what I
meant; but I persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and
not confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.
‘Most willingly,’ he retorted, =
216;if
I could. But, my dear Miss Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he tak=
es
me by the hand and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession
after fortune, I must go. If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!' I must jo=
in
it. Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common sense.’
It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.
‘Do you think so!’ returned Mr
Skimpole. ‘Don't say that, don't say that. Let us suppose him keeping
company with Common Sense--an excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadful=
ly
practical--change for a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book =
in
his hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear Richard,
sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young =
bud,
says to this highly respectable companion, 'I see a golden prospect before =
me;
it's very bright, it's very beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, boundin=
g over
the landscape to come at it!' The respectable companion instantly knocks him
down with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that =
he
sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair wigs,=
and
black gowns. Now you know that's a painful change--sensible in the last deg=
ree,
I have no doubt, but disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled
account- book, I have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition,=
I
am not at all respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it i=
s!’
It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we
should join Ada and Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr
Skimpole in despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning=
and
whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were such
portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone, he told us,
that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their hands. They tended
their flocks severely in buckram and powder and put their sticking-plaster
patches on to terrify commoners as the chiefs of some other tribes put on t=
heir
war-paint. There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine,
volumes of smoke, flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort,=
all
in full action between his horse's two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how
little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented as hav=
ing
evidently been, in life, what he called ‘stuffed people’--a lar=
ge
collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their various
twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and always =
in
glass cases.
I was not so easy now during any reference to =
the
name but that I felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surpr=
ise,
hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly towards
us.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Skimpole. ̵=
6;Vholes!’
We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.
‘Friend and legal adviser,’ said Mr
Skimpole. ‘Now, my dear Miss Summerson, if you want common sense,
responsibility, and respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary
man--Vholes is THE man.’
We had not known, we said, that Richard was
assisted by any gentleman of that name.
‘When he emerged from legal infancy,R=
17;
returned Mr Skimpole, ‘he parted from our conversational friend Kenge=
and
took up, I believe, with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced
him to Vholes.’
‘Had you known him long?’ asked Ad=
a.
‘Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had t=
hat
kind of acquaintance with him which I have had with several gentlemen of his
profession. He had done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manne=
r--
taken proceedings, I think, is the expression--which ended in the proceedin=
g of
his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and pay the money--someth=
ing
and fourpence was the amount; I forget the pounds and shillings, but I know=
it
ended with fourpence, because it struck me at the time as being so odd that=
I
could owe anybody fourpence--and after that I brought them together. Vholes
asked me for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it,=
217;
he looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the discover=
y, ‘Vholes
bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and called it commission. Was it a
five-pound note? Do you know, I think it MUST have been a five-pound note!&=
#8217;
His further consideration of the point was
prevented by Richard's coming back to us in an excited state and hastily
representing Mr Vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if th=
ey
were cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin, about
fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in black,
black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in =
him
as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had of looking at Richard.
‘I hope I don't disturb you, ladies,R=
17;
said Mr Vholes, and now I observed that he was further remarkable for an in=
ward
manner of speaking. ‘I arranged with Mr Carstone that he should always
know when his cause was in the Chancellor's paper, and being informed by on=
e of
my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather unexpectedly, in=
the
paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach early this morning and came
down to confer with him.’
‘Yes,’ said Richard, flushed, and
looking triumphantly at Ada and me, ‘we don't do these things in the =
old
slow way now. We spin along now! Mr Vholes, we must hire something to get o=
ver
to the post town in, and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!’
‘Anything you please, sir,’ return=
ed Mr
Vholes. ‘I am quite at your service.’
‘Let me see,’ said Richard, lookin=
g at
his watch. ‘If I run down to the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fast=
ened
up, and order a gig, or a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an=
hour
then before starting. I'll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther
take care of Mr Vholes when I am gone?’
He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, a=
nd
was soon lost in the dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the
house.
‘Is Mr Carstone's presence necessary
to-morrow, Sir?’ said I. ‘Can it do any good?’
‘No, miss,’ Mr Vholes replied. =
216;I
am not aware that it can.’
Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he sh=
ould
go, then, only to be disappointed.
‘Mr Carstone has laid down the principle=
of
watching his own interests,’ said Mr Vholes, ‘and when a client
lays down his own principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to
carry it out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
three daughters--Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my desire is so to discharge=
the
duties of life as to leave them a good name. This appears to be a pleasant
spot, miss.’
The remark being made to me in consequence of =
my
being next him as we walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attraction=
s.
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Vholes. ‘I
have the privilege of supporting an aged father in the Vale of Taunton--his
native place--and I admire that country very much. I had no idea there was
anything so attractive here.’
To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr Vholes=
if
he would like to live altogether in the country.
‘There, miss,’ said he, ‘you
touch me on a tender string. My health is not good (my digestion being much
impaired), and if I had only myself to consider, I should take refuge in ru=
ral
habits, especially as the cares of business have prevented me from ever com=
ing
much into contact with general society, and particularly with ladies' socie=
ty,
which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters, Emma, Jane,
and Caroline--and my aged father--I cannot afford to be selfish. It is true=
I
have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred and
second year, but enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill sh=
ould
be always going.’
It required some attention to hear him on acco=
unt
of his inward speaking and his lifeless manner.
‘You will excuse my having mentioned my
daughters,’ he said. ‘They are my weak point. I wish to leave t=
he
poor girls some little independence, as well as a good name.’
We now arrived at Mr Boythorn's house, where t=
he
tea-table, all prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurr=
ied
shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr Vholes's chair, whispered something=
in
his ear. Mr Vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud I suppose as he had ev=
er
replied to anything--’You will drive me, will you, sir? It is all the
same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am quite at your service.’
We understood from what followed that Mr Skimp=
ole
was to be left until the morning to occupy the two places which had been
already paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard =
and
very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we politely could th=
at
we should leave Mr Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms and retire when the
night-travellers were gone. Richard's high spirits carrying everything befo=
re
them, we all went out together to the top of the hill above the village, wh=
ere
he had ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern standi=
ng
at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed to it.
I never shall forget those two seated side by =
side
in the lantern's light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the r=
eins
in his hand; Mr Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking =
at
him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have before me the
whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer lightning, the dusty track=
of
road closed in by hedgerows and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his e=
ars
pricked up, and the driving away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
My dear girl told me that night how Richard's
being thereafter prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only m=
ake
this difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging he=
art,
the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him; how he thought =
of
her through his present errors, and she would think of him at all times--ne=
ver
of herself if she could devote herself to him, never of her own delights if=
she
could minister to his.
And she kept her word?
I look along the road before me, where the
distance already shortens and the journey's end is growing visible; and true
and good above the dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it =
cast
ashore, I think I see my darling.
When our time came for returning to Bleak House
again, we were punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering
welcome. I was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my
housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if I had =
been
a new year, with a merry little peal. ‘Once more, duty, duty, Esther,=
’
said I; ‘and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully =
and
contentedly, through anything and everything, you ought to be. That's all I
have to say to you, my dear!’
The first few mornings were mornings of so much
bustle and business, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated
journeys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, =
so
many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new beginning
altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when these arrangements =
were
completed and everything was in order, I paid a visit of a few hours to Lon=
don,
which something in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced m=
e to
decide upon in my own mind.
I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so
natural to me that I always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and
wrote her a note previously asking the favour of her company on a little bu=
siness
expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London by
stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the day befo=
re
me.
Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-d=
ay,
was so glad and so affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should m=
ake
her husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as good; a=
nd
in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any possibility of
doing anything meritorious.
The elder Mr Turveydrop was in bed, I found, a=
nd
Caddy was milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an
apprentice --it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade =
of
dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law was extremely kind
and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived most happily together. (When=
she
spoke of their living together, she meant that the old gentleman had all the
good things and all the good lodging, while she and her husband had what th=
ey
could get, and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)
‘And how is your mama, Caddy?’ sai=
d I.
‘Why, I hear of her, Esther,’ repl=
ied
Caddy, ‘through Pa, but I see very little of her. We are good friends=
, I
am glad to say, but Ma thinks there is something absurd in my having marrie=
d a
dancing- master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her.’
It struck me that if Mrs Jellyby had discharged
her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a
telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions
against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this to
myself.
‘And your papa, Caddy?’
‘He comes here every evening,’
returned Caddy, ‘and is so fond of sitting in the corner there that i=
t's
a treat to see him.’
Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the
mark of Mr Jellyby's head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that=
he
had found such a resting-place for it.
‘And you, Caddy,’ said I, ‘y=
ou
are always busy, I'll be bound?’
‘Well, my dear,’ returned Caddy, &=
#8216;I
am indeed, for to tell you a grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give
lessons. Prince's health is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him.
What with schools, and classes here, and private pupils,
The notion of the apprentices was still so odd=
to
me that I asked Caddy if there were many of them.
‘Four,’ said Caddy. ‘One
in-door, and three out. They are very good children; only when they get
together they WILL play-- children-like--instead of attending to their work=
. So
the little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, an=
d we
distribute the others over the house as well as we can.’
‘That is only for their steps, of course=
?’
said I.
‘Only for their steps,’ said Caddy=
. ‘In
that way they practise, so many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen=
to
be upon. They dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures =
at
five every morning.’
‘Why, what a laborious life!’ I
exclaimed.
‘I assure you, my dear,’ returned =
Caddy,
smiling, ‘when the out- door apprentices ring us up in the morning (t=
he
bell rings into our room, not to disturb old Mr Turveydrop), and when I put=
up
the window and see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps u=
nder
their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps.’
All this presented the art to me in a singular
light, to be sure. Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerf=
ully
recounted the particulars of her own studies.
‘You see, my dear, to save expense I oug=
ht
to know something of the piano, and I ought to know something of the kit to=
o,
and consequently I have to practise those two instruments as well as the
details of our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have h=
ad
some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any; and that
part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must allow. But I h=
ave
a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery--I have to thank Ma for that, at=
all
events-- and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world
over.’ Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little jing=
ling
square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she
good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed
herself, said, ‘Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!’=
I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I
encouraged her and praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously
believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though=
in
her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural,
wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite as goo=
d as
a mission.
‘My dear,’ said Caddy, delighted, =
‘you
can't think how you cheer me. I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What
changes, Esther, even in my small world! You recollect that first night, wh=
en I
was so unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching
people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!’
Her husband, who had left us while we had this
chat, now coming back, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the
ball-room, Caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my
time yet, I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her =
away
then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I made =
one
in the dance.
The apprentices were the queerest little peopl=
e.
Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing
alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little =
limp
girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bon=
net
on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an o=
ld
threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not danci=
ng,
with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most un=
tidy
legs and feet--and heels particularly.
I asked Caddy what had made their parents choo=
se
this profession for them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were
designed for teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble
circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer shop.
We danced for an hour with great gravity, the
melancholy child doing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there
appeared to be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist.
Caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon
him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which, united to =
her
pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She already relieved him =
of
much of the instruction of these young people, and he seldom interfered exc=
ept
to walk his part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He always pl=
ayed
the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the
boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.
When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husba=
nd
made himself ready to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get
ready to go out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplat=
ing
the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put on th=
eir
half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from the nature of =
his
objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in
them, they then produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked unde=
r a
painted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals
into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head i=
nto
the dowdy bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked
dancing by replying, ‘Not with boys,’ tied it across her chin, =
and
went home contemptuous.
‘Old Mr Turveydrop is so sorry,’ s=
aid
Caddy, ‘that he has not finished dressing yet and cannot have the
pleasure of seeing you before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esth=
er.’
I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did
not think it necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.=
‘It takes him a long time to dress,̵=
7;
said Caddy, ‘because he is very much looked up to in such things, you
know, and has a reputation to support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa=
. He
talks to Pa of an evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so
interested.’
There was something in the picture of Mr
Turveydrop bestowing his deportment on Mr Jellyby that quite took my fancy.=
I
asked Caddy if he brought her papa out much.
‘No,’ said Caddy, ‘I don't k=
now
that he does that, but he talks to Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and list=
ens,
and likes it. Of course I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportm=
ent,
but they get on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions
they make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one pi=
nch
out of Mr Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to his nose and
taking it away again all the evening.’
That old Mr Turveydrop should ever, in the cha=
nces
and changes of life, have come to the rescue of Mr Jellyby from Borrioboola=
-Gha
appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
‘As to Peepy,’ said Caddy with a
little hesitation, ‘whom I was most afraid of--next to having any fam=
ily
of my own, Esther--as an inconvenience to Mr Turveydrop, the kindness of the
old gentleman to that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my de=
ar!
He lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of=
his
toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him =
to
come to me for sixpences. In short,’ said Caddy cheerily, ‘and =
not
to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to be very grateful. Where a=
re
we going, Esther?’
‘To the Old Street Road,’ said I, =
‘where
I have a few words to say to the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me =
at
the coach- office on the very day when I came to London and first saw you, =
my
dear. Now I think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house.’=
‘Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the
person to go with you,’ returned Caddy.
To the Old Street Road we went and there inqui=
red
at Mrs Guppy's residence for Mrs Guppy. Mrs Guppy, occupying the parlours a=
nd
having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut in the
front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for, immediately
presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an old lady in a lar=
ge
cap, with rather a red nose and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all ove=
r.
Her close little sitting-room was prepared for a visit, and there was a
portrait of her son in it which, I had almost written here, was more like t=
han
life: it insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to
let him off.
Not only was the portrait there, but we found =
the
original there too. He was dressed in a great many colours and was discover=
ed
at a table reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.
‘Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Guppy,
rising, ‘this is indeed an oasis. Mother, will you be so good as to p=
ut a
chair for the other lady and get out of the gangway.’
Mrs Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her qu=
ite a
waggish appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,
holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both
hands.
I presented Caddy, and Mr Guppy said that any
friend of mine was more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my
visit.
‘I took the liberty of sending you a not=
e,
sir,’ said I.
Mr Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it=
out
of his breast- pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pock=
et
with a bow. Mr Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head as s=
he
smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.
‘Could I speak to you alone for a moment=
?’
said I.
Anything like the jocoseness of Mr Guppy's mot=
her
just now, I think I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled
her head, and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed=
to
Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so unspeakably
entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty she could marshal C=
addy
through the little folding-door into her bedroom adjoining.
‘Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Guppy, &=
#8216;you
will excuse the waywardness of a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My
mother, though highly exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal
dictates.’
I could hardly have believed that anybody coul=
d in
a moment have turned so red or changed so much as Mr Guppy did when I now p=
ut
up my veil.
‘I asked the favour of seeing you for a =
few
moments here,’ said I, ‘in preference to calling at Mr Kenge's =
because,
remembering what you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence=
, I
feared I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr Guppy.’
I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I=
am
sure. I never saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and
apprehension.
‘Miss Summerson,’ stammered Mr Gup=
py, ‘I--I--beg
your pardon, but in our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explici=
t.
You have referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the honou=
r of
making a declaration which--’
Something seemed to rise in his throat that he
could not possibly swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tri=
ed
again to swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the
room, and fluttered his papers.
‘A kind of giddy sensation has come upon=
me,
miss,’ he explained, ‘which rather knocks me over. I--er--a lit=
tle
subject to this sort of thing--er--by George!’
I gave him a little time to recover. He consum=
ed
it in putting his hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in bac=
king
his chair into the corner behind him.
‘My intention was to remark, miss,’
said Mr Guppy, ‘dear me-- something bronchial, I think--hem!--to rema=
rk
that you was so good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that
declaration. You-- you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no
witnesses are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you =
was
to put in that admission.’
‘There can be no doubt,’ said I, &=
#8216;that
I declined your proposal without any reservation or qualification whatever,=
Mr
Guppy.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ he returned,
measuring the table with his troubled hands. ‘So far that's satisfact=
ory,
and it does you credit. Er--this is certainly bronchial!--must be in the
tubes-- er--you wouldn't perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that =
it's
necessary, for your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that=
--if
I was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there
terminated?’
‘I quite understand that,’ said I.=
‘Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the fo=
rm,
but it might be a satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to
admit that, miss?’ said Mr Guppy.
‘I admit it most fully and freely,’
said I.
‘Thank you,’ returned Mr Guppy. =
8216;Very
honourable, I am sure. I regret that my arrangements in life, combined with
circumstances over which I have no control, will put it out of my power eve=
r to
fall back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever, but=
it
will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's bowers.’ Mr=
Guppy's
bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his measurement of the table.
‘I may now perhaps mention what I wished=
to
say to you?’ I began.
‘I shall be honoured, I am sure,’ =
said
Mr Guppy. ‘I am so persuaded that your own good sense and right feeli=
ng,
miss, will-- will keep you as square as possible--that I can have nothing b=
ut
pleasure, I am sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer.R=
17;
‘You were so good as to imply, on that
occasion--’
‘Excuse me, miss,’ said Mr Guppy, =
‘but
we had better not travel out of the record into implication. I cannot admit
that I implied anything.’
‘You said on that occasion,’ I
recommenced, ‘that you might possibly have the means of advancing my
interests and promoting my fortunes by making discoveries of which I should=
be
the subject. I presume that you founded that belief upon your general knowl=
edge
of my being an orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr
Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg of you =
is, Mr
Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish all idea of so serving=
me.
I have thought of this sometimes, and I have thought of it most lately--sin=
ce I
have been ill. At length I have decided, in case you should at any time rec=
all
that purpose and act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that=
you
are altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me that
would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I am acquainted
with my personal history, and I have it in my power to assure you that you
never can advance my welfare by such means. You may, perhaps, have abandoned
this project a long time. If so, excuse my giving you unnecessary trouble. =
If
not, I entreat you, on the assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it
aside. I beg you to do this, for my peace.’
‘I am bound to confess,’ said Mr
Guppy, ‘that you express yourself, miss, with that good sense and rig=
ht
feeling for which I gave you credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than =
such
right feeling, and if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am
prepared to tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as
hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and right
feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present proceedings.’=
I must say for Mr Guppy that the snuffling man=
ner
he had had upon him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to =
do
something I asked, and he looked ashamed.
‘If you will allow me to finish what I h=
ave
to say at once so that I may have no occasion to resume,’ I went on,
seeing him about to speak, ‘you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to=
you
as privately as possible because you announced this impression of yours to =
me
in a confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I always h=
ave
respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There really is no
reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very well that any little
delicacy I might have had in making a request to you is quite removed.
Therefore I make the entreaty I have now preferred, and I hope you will have
sufficient consideration for me to accede to it.’
I must do Mr Guppy the further justice of sayi=
ng
that he had looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and
very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, ‘Upon my word a=
nd
honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living man, I=
'll
act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in opposition to it.
I'll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. In what I
promise at this present time touching the matters now in question,’
continued Mr Guppy rapidly, as if he were repeating a familiar form of word=
s, ‘I
speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--’
‘I am quite satisfied,’ said I, ri=
sing
at this point, ‘and I thank you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready=
!’
Mr Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now mak=
ing
me the recipient of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our le=
ave.
Mr Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either imperfectly
awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there, staring.
But in a minute he came after us down the stre=
et
without any hat, and with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, sa=
ying
fervently, ‘Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend u=
pon
me!’
‘I do,’ said I, ‘quite
confidently.’
‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said Mr
Guppy, going with one leg and staying with the other, ‘but this lady
being present--your own witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (w=
hich
I should wish to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions.’=
‘Well, Caddy,’ said I, turning to =
her,
‘perhaps you will not be surprised when I tell you, my dear, that the=
re
never has been any engagement--’
‘No proposal or promise of marriage
whatsoever,’ suggested Mr Guppy.
‘No proposal or promise of marriage
whatsoever,’ said I, ‘between this gentleman--’
‘William Guppy, of Penton Place,
Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex,’ he murmured.
‘Between this gentleman, Mr William Gupp=
y,
of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself.’=
;
‘Thank you, miss,’ said Mr Guppy. =
‘Very
full--er--excuse me-- lady's name, Christian and surname both?’
I gave them.
‘Married woman, I believe?’ said Mr
Guppy. ‘Married woman. Thank you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster,
then of Thavies Inn, within the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of
Newman Street, Oxford Street. Much obliged.’
He ran home and came running back again.
‘Touching that matter, you know, I reall=
y and
truly am very sorry that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstanc=
es
over which I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly
terminated some time back,’ said Mr Guppy to me forlornly and
despondently, ‘but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put=
it
to you.’
I replied it certainly could not. The subject =
did
not admit of a doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back
again.
‘It's very honourable of you, miss, I am
sure,’ said Mr Guppy. ‘If an altar could be erected in the bowe=
rs
of friendship--but, upon my soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save
and except the tender passion only!’
The struggle in Mr Guppy's breast and the nume=
rous
oscillations it occasioned him between his mother's door and us were
sufficiently conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair want=
ed
cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but when we
last looked back, Mr Guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state=
of
mind.
The name of Mr Vholes, preceded by the legend
Ground-Floor, is inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane-=
-a
little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two
compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his =
way
and constructed his inn of old building materials which took kindly to the =
dry
rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond's
memory with congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this dingy hatchment
commemorative of Symond are the legal bearings of Mr Vholes.
Mr Vholes's office, in disposition retiring an=
d in
situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Th=
ree
feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr Vholes's jet-bla=
ck
door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning and
encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage staircase against which belated
civilians generally strike their brows. Mr Vholes's chambers are on so smal=
l a
scale that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool, while=
the
other who elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the f=
ire.
A smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and dust is
referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of mutton fat in can=
dles
and to the fretting of parchment forms and skins in greasy drawers. The
atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. The place was last painted or
whitewashed beyond the memory of man, and the two chimneys smoke, and there=
is
a loose outer surface of soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in t=
heir
heavy frames have but one piece of character in them, which is a determinat=
ion
to be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the ph=
enomenon
of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of firewood thrust between=
its
jaws in hot weather.
Mr Vholes is a very respectable man. He has no=
t a
large business, but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the grea=
ter
attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most
respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a mark =
of
respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of
respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another mark of
respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly respectable. And=
he
is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his
father is dependent on him in the Vale of Taunton.
The one great principle of the English law is =
to
make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly,
and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this
light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze the laity are=
apt
to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is=
to
make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to
grumble.
But not perceiving this quite plainly--only se=
eing
it by halves in a confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and poc=
ket,
with a bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr
Vholes is brought into powerful play against them. ‘Repeal this statu=
te,
my good sir?’ says Mr Kenge to a smarting client. ‘Repeal it, my
dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and what will be the
effect of your rash proceeding on a class of practitioners very worthily
represented, allow me to say to you, by the opposite attorney in the case, =
Mr
Vholes? Sir, that class of practitioners would be swept from the face of the
earth. Now you cannot afford--I will say, the social system cannot afford--=
to
lose an order of men like Mr Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute in
business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against the exist=
ing
state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in your case; but I can
never raise my voice for the demolition of a class of men like Mr Vholes.=
8217;
The respectability of Mr Vholes has even been cited with crushing effect be=
fore
Parliamentary committees, as in the following blue minutes of a distinguish=
ed
attorney's evidence. ‘Question (number five hundred and seventeen
thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of
practice indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And
great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for nothi=
ng.
Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not prepared to say that. =
They
have never given ME any vexation; quite the contrary. Question: But you thi=
nk
that their abolition would damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have =
no
doubt of it. Question: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes=
. I
would unhesitatingly mention Mr Vholes. He would be ruined. Question: Mr Vh=
oles
is considered, in the profession, a respectable man? Answer:’--which
proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years--’Mr Vholes is considered, =
in
the profession, a MOST respectable man.’
So in familiar conversation, private authoriti=
es
no less disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is com=
ing
to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is something else g=
one,
that these changes are death to people like Vholes--a man of undoubted
respectability, with a father in the Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at
home. Take a few steps more in this direction, say they, and what is to bec=
ome
of Vholes's father? Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to=
be
shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr Vholes and his relations being
minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, indigna=
nt
champions were to put the case thus: Make man-eating unlawful, and you star=
ve
the Vholeses!
In a word, Mr Vholes, with his three daughters=
and
his father in the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece =
of
timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a
nuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the quest=
ion
is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite an extraneous
consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently
respectable legion, Vholes.
The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, &=
#8216;up’
for the long vacation. Mr Vholes, and his young client, and several blue ba=
gs
hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of serpen=
ts
are in their first gorged state, have returned to the official den. Mr Vhol=
es,
quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much respectability ought to be, takes off
his close black gloves as if he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight
hat as if he were scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client
throws his hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without
looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, ha=
lf
sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and looks the
portrait of young despair.
‘Again nothing done!’ says Richard=
. ‘Nothing,
nothing done!’
‘Don't say nothing done, sir,’ ret=
urns
the placid Vholes. ‘That is scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!’=
‘Why, what IS done?’ says Richard,
turning gloomily upon him.
‘That may not be the whole question,R=
17;
returns Vholes, ‘The question may branch off into what is doing, what=
is
doing?’
‘And what is doing?’ asks the moody
client.
Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, qui=
etly
bringing the tips of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five le=
ft
fingers, and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking =
at
his client, replies, ‘A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our
shoulders to the wheel, Mr Carstone, and the wheel is going round.’
‘Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get
through the next four or five accursed months?’ exclaims the young ma=
n,
rising from his chair and walking about the room.
‘Mr C.,’ returns Vholes, following=
him
close with his eyes wherever he goes, ‘your spirits are hasty, and I =
am
sorry for it on your account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so
much, not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have =
more
patience. You should sustain yourself better.’
‘I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr Vho=
les?’
says Richard, sitting down again with an impatient laugh and beating the
devil's tattoo with his boot on the patternless carpet.
‘Sir,’ returns Vholes, always look=
ing
at the client as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as
well as with his professional appetite. ‘Sir,’ returns Vholes w=
ith
his inward manner of speech and his bloodless quietude, ‘I should not
have had the presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or=
any
man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that is en=
ough
for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so pointedly, I wi=
ll
acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a little of my--come, sir, =
you
are disposed to call it insensibility, and I am sure I have no objection--s=
ay
insensibility--a little of my insensibility.’
‘Mr Vholes,’ explains the client,
somewhat abashed, ‘I had no intention to accuse you of insensibility.=
’
‘I think you had, sir, without knowing i=
t,’
returns the equable Vholes. ‘Very naturally. It is my duty to attend =
to
your interests with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your
excited feelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My
daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But they h=
ave
known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye of affection is n=
ot
the distrustful eye of business. Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of
business being distrustful; quite the contrary. In attending to your intere=
sts,
I wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that I should have
them; I court inquiry. But your interests demand that I should be cool and
methodical, Mr Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise--no, sir, not even to pl=
ease
you.’
Mr Vholes, after glancing at the official cat =
who
is patiently watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his y=
oung
client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if there were=
an
unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor speak out, ‘What=
are
you to do, sir, you inquire, during the vacation. I should hope you gentlem=
en
of the army may find many means of amusing yourselves if you give your mind=
s to
it. If you had asked me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have
answered you more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be fou=
nd
here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr C., and
term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish to consult me =
as
to your interests, you will find me here at all times alike. Other professi=
onal
men go out of town. I don't. Not that I blame them for going; I merely say I
don't go. This desk is your rock, sir!’
Mr Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hol=
low
as a coffin. Not to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to
him. Perhaps Mr Vholes knows there is.
‘I am perfectly aware, Mr Vholes,’
says Richard, more familiarly and good-humouredly, ‘that you are the =
most
reliable fellow in the world and that to have to do with you is to have to =
do
with a man of business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my
case, dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into
difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually disappointed,
conscious of change upon change for the worse in myself, and of no change f=
or
the better in anything else, and you will find it a dark-looking case
sometimes, as I do.’
‘You know,’ says Mr Vholes, ‘=
;that
I never give hopes, sir. I told you from the first, Mr C., that I never give
hopes. Particularly in a case like this, where the greater part of the costs
comes out of the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I g=
ave
hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say there =
is
no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact, deny that.̵=
7;
‘Aye?’ returns Richard, brightenin=
g. ‘But
how do you make it out?’
‘Mr Carstone, you are represented by--=
8217;
‘You said just now--a rock.’
‘Yes, sir,’ says Mr Vholes, gently
shaking his head and rapping the hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were
falling on ashes, and dust on dust, ‘a rock. That's something. You are
separately represented, and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of
others. THAT'S something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it=
, we
walk it about. THAT'S something. It's not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as =
in
name. THAT'S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir. And THAT'S
something, surely.’
Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes t=
he
desk with his clenched hand.
‘Mr Vholes! If any man had told me when I
first went to John Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinteres=
ted
friend he seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--I cou=
ld
have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not have
defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world! Whereas now I=
do
declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that in pl=
ace
of its being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, t=
he
more indignant I am with him; that every new delay and every new disappoint=
ment
is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand.’
‘No, no,’ says Vholes. ‘Don't
say so. We ought to have patience, all of us. Besides, I never disparage, s=
ir.
I never disparage.’
‘Mr Vholes,’ returns the angry cli=
ent.
‘You know as well as I that he would have strangled the suit if he co=
uld.’
‘He was not active in it,’ Mr Vhol=
es
admits with an appearance of reluctance. ‘He certainly was not active=
in
it. But however, but however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can
read the heart, Mr C.!’
‘You can,’ returns Richard.
‘I, Mr C.?’
‘Well enough to know what his intentions
were. Are or are not our interests conflicting? Tell--me--that!’ says
Richard, accompanying his last three words with three raps on his rock of
trust.
‘Mr C.,’ returns Vholes, immovable=
in
attitude and never winking his hungry eyes, ‘I should be wanting in my
duty as your professional adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to
your interests, if I represented those interests as identical with the
interests of Mr Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motiv=
es;
I both have and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not shr=
ink
from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in families. I unders=
tand
you to be now consulting me professionally as to your interests? You are so=
? I
reply, then, they are not identical with those of Mr Jarndyce.’
‘Of course they are not!’ cries
Richard. ‘You found that out long ago.’
‘Mr C.,’ returns Vholes, ‘I =
wish
to say no more of any third party than is necessary. I wish to leave my good
name unsullied, together with any little property of which I may become
possessed through industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and
Caroline. I also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. Whe=
n Mr
Skimpole did me the honour, sir--I will not say the very high honour, for I
never stoop to flattery--of bringing us together in this room, I mentioned =
to
you that I could offer no opinion or advice as to your interests while those
interests were entrusted to another member of the profession. And I spoke in
such terms as I was bound to speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which stan=
ds
high. You, sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping
nevertheless and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, si=
r,
and I accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount in =
this
office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not i=
n a
good state, and rest might improve them; but I shall not rest, sir, while I=
am
your representative. Whenever you want me, you will find me here. Summon me
anywhere, and I will come. During the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my
leisure to studying your interests more and more closely and to making
arrangements for moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancel=
lor)
after Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir,’ =
says
Mr Vholes with the severity of a determined man, ‘when I ultimately
congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to fortune--whi=
ch,
but that I never give hopes, I might say something further about--you will =
owe
me nothing beyond whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the co=
sts
as between solicitor and client not included in the taxed costs allowed out=
of
the estate. I pretend to no claim upon you, Mr C., but for the zealous and
active discharge--not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much cre=
dit
I stipulate for--of my professional duty. My duty prosperously ended, all
between us is ended.’
Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this
declaration of his principles, that as Mr Carstone is about to rejoin his
regiment, perhaps Mr C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twen=
ty
pounds on account.
‘For there have been many little
consultations and attendances of late, sir,’ observes Vholes, turning
over the leaves of his diary, ‘and these things mount up, and I don't
profess to be a man of capital. When we first entered on our present relati=
ons
I stated to you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be t=
oo
much openness between solicitor and client--that I was not a man of capital=
and
that if capital was your object you had better leave your papers in Kenge's
office. No, Mr C., you will find none of the advantages or disadvantages of
capital here, sir. This,’ Vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again=
, ‘is
your rock; it pretends to be nothing more.’
The client, with his dejection insensibly reli=
eved
and his vague hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not
without perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear,
implying scant effects in the agent's hands. All the while, Vholes, buttone=
d up
in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the while, Vholes's official
cat watches the mouse's hole.
Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr
Vholes, for heaven's sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to ‘pull=
him
through’ the Court of Chancery. Mr Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays
his palm upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile, ‘Always
here, sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir, wit=
h my
shoulder to the wheel.’ Thus they part, and Vholes, left alone, emplo=
ys himself
in carrying sundry little matters out of his diary into his draft bill book=
for
the ultimate behoof of his three daughters. So might an industrious fox or =
bear
make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs,
not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up
maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage situated in a
damp garden at Kennington.
Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symo=
nd's
Inn into the sunshine of Chancery Lane--for there happens to be sunshine th=
ere
to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and passes und=
er
the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such loungers have the speck=
led
shadows of those trees often fallen; on the like bent head, the bitten nail,
the lowering eye, the lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the g=
ood
consuming and consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby ye=
t,
but that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is ver=
y rich
in such precedents; and why should one be different from ten thousand?
Yet the time is so short since his depreciation
began that as he saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long
months together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case =
as
if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with corroding care,
suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for some sorrowful wonder w=
hen
he recalls how different his first visit there, how different he, how diffe=
rent
all the colours of his mind. But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting w=
ith
shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substance=
s to
combat; from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time
for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to the
palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this ruin and m=
ake
HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the truth. Is he in a hardened or a
softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally at that door; he was
thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only
originate in the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself;
besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an embodied
antagonist and oppressor.
Is Richard a monster in all this, or would
Chancery be found rich in such precedents too if they could be got for cita=
tion
from the Recording Angel?
Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people lo=
ok
after him, as, biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is
swallowed up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr Guppy and Mr Weevle =
are
the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in conversation
against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes close by them, see=
ing
nothing but the ground.
‘William,’ says Mr Weevle, adjusti=
ng
his whiskers, ‘there's combustion going on there! It's not a case of
spontaneous, but it's smouldering combustion it is.’
‘Ah!’ says Mr Guppy. ‘He
wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I suppose he's over head and ears in deb=
t. I
never knew much of him. He was as high as the monument when he was on trial=
at
our place. A good riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, t=
hat
as I was mentioning is what they're up to.’
Mr Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself
against the parapet, as resuming a conversation of interest.
‘They are still up to it, sir,’ sa=
ys Mr
Guppy, ‘still taking stock, still examining papers, still going over =
the
heaps and heaps of rubbish. At this rate they'll be at it these seven years=
.’
‘And Small is helping?’
‘Small left us at a week's notice. Told
Kenge his grandfather's business was too much for the old gentleman and he
could better himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between
myself and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I be=
gan
it, and as he had me there--for we did--I put our acquaintance on the old
footing. That's how I come to know what they're up to.’
‘You haven't looked in at all?’
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy, a little di=
sconcerted,
‘to be unreserved with you, I don't greatly relish the house, except =
in
your company, and therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little
appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by the
clock! Tony’--Mr Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly eloquent--=
8217;it
is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once more that circumstan=
ces
over which I have no control have made a melancholy alteration in my most
cherished plans and in that unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to =
you
as a friend. That image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wi=
sh
now in connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the
court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in oblivio=
n. Do
you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I put it to you, Tony=
, as
a friend), from your knowledge of that capricious and deep old character who
fell a prey to the--spontaneous element, do you, Tony, think it at all like=
ly
that on second thoughts he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw h=
im
alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?’
Mr Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his h=
ead.
Decidedly thinks not.
‘Tony,’ says Mr Guppy as they walk
towards the court, ‘once again understand me, as a friend. Without
entering into further explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I h=
ave
no purpose to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myse=
lf.
I owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the
circumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to me by a
gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late lodgings any
papers that so much as looked like the papers in question, I would pitch th=
em
into the fire, sir, on my own responsibility.’
Mr Weevle nods. Mr Guppy, much elevated in his=
own
opinion by having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic
and in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for conducting anythi=
ng
in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the form of a summ=
ing
up or a speech--accompanies his friend with dignity to the court.
Never since it has been a court has it had suc=
h a
Fortunatus' purse of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle sho=
p.
Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr Smallweed brought down to
the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs Smallweed, Judy, and Bart; and
regularly, all day, do they all remain there until nine at night, solaced by
gipsy dinners, not abundant in quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and
searching, digging, delving, and diving among the treasures of the late
lamented. What those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is
maddened. In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots,
crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses stuffed with
Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the sixpenny history (with hi=
ghly
coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also=
of Mr
Elwes, of Suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic narrati=
ves
to Mr Krook. Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of=
old
paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries into =
the
baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who write with the
ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen prowling in the
neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late partnership being dissolved. T=
he
Sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing interest through the Harmonic
nights. Little Swills, in what are professionally known as ‘patter=
217;
allusions to the subject, is received with loud applause; and the same voca=
list
‘gags’ in the regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M.
Melvilleson, in the revived Caledonian melody of ‘We're a-Nodding,=
217;
points the sentiment that ‘the dogs love broo’ (whatever the na=
ture
of that refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head
towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr Smallweed l=
oves
to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double encore. For all this, =
the
court discovers nothing; and as Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins now communicate to
the late lodger whose appearance is the signal for a general rally, it is in
one continual ferment to discover everything, and more.
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy, with every eye in the
court's head upon them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's hou=
se,
in a high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court's expectation
admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are considered to mean no g=
ood.
The shutters are more or less closed all over =
the
house, and the ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introd=
uced
into the back shop by Mr Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the sunlig=
ht,
can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but they gradually disc=
ern
the elder Mr Smallweed seated in his chair upon the brink of a well or grav=
e of
waste-paper, the virtuous Judy groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs
Smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper
fragments, print, and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated
compliments that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The
whole party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a
fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room. There is
more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier if possible;
likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead inhabitant and even with his
chalked writing on the wall.
On the entrance of visitors, Mr Smallweed and =
Judy
simultaneously fold their arms and stop in their researches.
‘Aha!’ croaks the old gentleman. &=
#8216;How
de do, gentlemen, how de do! Come to fetch your property, Mr Weevle? That's
well, that's well. Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, =
to
pay your warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite=
at
home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!’
Mr Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr
Guppy's eye follows Mr Weevle's eye. Mr Weevle's eye comes back without any=
new
intelligence in it. Mr Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr Smallweed's eye.
That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like some wound-up instrume=
nt
running down, ‘How de do, sir--how de--how--’ And then having r=
un
down, he lapses into grinning silence, as Mr Guppy starts at seeing Mr
Tulkinghorn standing in the darkness opposite with his hands behind him.
‘Gentleman so kind as to act as my
solicitor,’ says Grandfather Smallweed. ‘I am not the sort of
client for a gentleman of such note, but he is so good!’
Mr Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take
another look, makes a shuffling bow to Mr Tulkinghorn, who returns it with =
an
easy nod. Mr Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and =
were
rather amused by the novelty.
‘A good deal of property here, sir, I sh=
ould
say,’ Mr Guppy observes to Mr Smallweed.
‘Principally rags and rubbish, my dear
friend! Rags and rubbish! Me and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are
endeavouring to make out an inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But=
we
haven't come to much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!’
Mr Smallweed has run down again, while Mr Weev=
le's
eye, attended by Mr Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come bac=
k.
‘Well, sir,’ says Mr Weevle. ̵=
6;We
won't intrude any longer if you'll allow us to go upstairs.’
‘Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're=
at
home. Make yourself so, pray!’
As they go upstairs, Mr Guppy lifts his eyebro=
ws
inquiringly and looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room
very dull and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that
memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great disinclinat=
ion
to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from it first. Nor are they
desirous to prolong their visit, packing the few movables with all possible
speed and never speaking above a whisper.
‘Look here,’ says Tony, recoiling.=
‘Here's
that horrible cat coming in!’
Mr Guppy retreats behind a chair. ‘Small
told me of her. She went leaping and bounding and tearing about that night =
like
a dragon, and got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a
fortnight, and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever =
see
such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost looks as=
if
she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!’
Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl
from ear to ear and her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but =
Mr
Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and swearing
wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam the house-tops
again and return by the chimney.
‘Mr Guppy,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, &=
#8216;could
I have a word with you?’
Mr Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy
Gallery of British Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in
their old ignoble band-box. ‘Sir,’ he returns, reddening, ̵=
6;I
wish to act with courtesy towards every member of the profession, and
especially, I am sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself--I =
will
truly add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr Tulkinghorn, sir, I
must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is spoken in the
presence of my friend.’
‘Oh, indeed?’ says Mr Tulkinghorn.=
‘Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a perso=
nal
nature at all, but they are amply sufficient for myself.’
‘No doubt, no doubt.’ Mr Tulkingho=
rn
is as imperturbable as the hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. R=
16;The
matter is not of that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of mak=
ing
any conditions, Mr Guppy.’ He pauses here to smile, and his smile is =
as
dull and rusty as his pantaloons. ‘You are to be congratulated, Mr Gu=
ppy;
you are a fortunate young man, sir.’
‘Pretty well so, Mr Tulkinghorn; I don't
complain.’
‘Complain? High friends, free admission =
to
great houses, and access to elegant ladies! Why, Mr Guppy, there are people=
in
London who would give their ears to be you.’
Mr Guppy, looking as if he would give his own
reddening and still reddening ears to be one of those people at present ins=
tead
of himself, replies, ‘Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is
right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no consequen=
ce
to them nor to any member of the profession, not excepting Mr Tulkinghorn of
the Fields. I am not under any obligation to explain myself further; and wi=
th
all respect for you, sir, and without offence--I repeat, without offence--&=
#8217;
‘Oh, certainly!’
‘--I don't intend to do it.’
‘Quite so,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn wi=
th a
calm nod. ‘Very good; I see by these portraits that you take a strong
interest in the fashionable great, sir?’
He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who
admits the soft impeachment.
‘A virtue in which few Englishmen are
deficient,’ observes Mr Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the
hearthstone with his back to the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round =
with
his glasses to his eyes. ‘Who is this? 'Lady Dedlock.' Ha! A very good
likeness in its way, but it wants force of character. Good day to you,
gentlemen; good day!’
When he has walked out, Mr Guppy, in a great
perspiration, nerves himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of =
the
Galaxy Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.
‘Tony,’ he says hurriedly to his
astonished companion, ‘let us be quick in putting the things together=
and
in getting out of this place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, T=
ony,
that between myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I
now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and associatio=
n.
The time might have been when I might have revealed it to you. It never wil=
l be
more. It is due alike to the oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol,
and alike to circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole sho=
uld
be buried in oblivion. I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have e=
ver
testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with
which I may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word=
of
inquiry!’
This charge Mr Guppy delivers in a state little
short of forensic lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole =
head
of hair and even in his cultivated whiskers.
England has been in a dreadful state for some
weeks. Lord Coodle would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and th=
ere
being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there=
has
been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting between those two
great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off, because if
both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other,=
it
is to be presumed that England must have waited to be governed until young
Coodle and young Doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. T=
his
stupendous national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle's making =
the
timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he scorned =
and
despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle, he had merely meant=
to
say that party differences should never induce him to withhold from it the
tribute of his warmest admiration; while it as opportunely turned out, on t=
he
other hand, that Sir Thomas Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lo=
rd
Coodle to go down to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still
England has been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was
well observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the
marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to care very
much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and marrying and giving =
in
marriage as the old world did in the days before the flood. But Coodle knew=
the
danger, and Doodle knew the danger, and all their followers and hangers-on =
had
the clearest possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle h=
as
not only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in w=
ith
him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his brothers-in-law. So =
there
is hope for the old ship yet.
Doodle has found that he must throw himself up=
on
the country, chiefly in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorpho=
sed
state he is available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw
himself upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia b=
eing
much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns, and swallowing
Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself black in the face that =
she
does neither-- plainly to the advancement of her glory and morality--the Lo=
ndon
season comes to a sudden end, through all the Doodleites and Coodleites
dispersing to assist Britannia in those religious exercises.
Hence Mrs Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney W=
old,
foresees, though no instructions have yet come down, that the family may
shortly be expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and
others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And hence t=
he
stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up and down the
staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and through the rooms, to
witness before he grows any older that everything is ready, that floors are
rubbed bright, carpets spread, curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted,
still-room and kitchen cleared for action--all things prepared as beseems t=
he
Dedlock dignity.
This present summer evening, as the sun goes d=
own,
the preparations are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with =
so
many appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured f=
orms
upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in possession might have
ruminated passing along; so did they see this gallery hushed and quiet, as I
see it now; so think, as I think, of the gap that they would make in this d=
omain
when they were gone; so find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it
could be without them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now
closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.=
Through some of the fiery windows beautiful fr=
om
without, and set, at this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glor=
ious
house of gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,
overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen Dedlocks=
thaw.
Strange movements come upon their features as the shadows of leaves play th=
ere.
A dense justice in a corner is beguiled into a wink. A staring baronet, wit=
h a
truncheon, gets a dimple in his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony
shepherdess there steals a fleck of light and warmth that would have done it
good a hundred years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high- heeled shoes,
very like her--casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two
centuries--shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of honour of =
the
court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and other charms to
correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it ripples as it glows.
But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the
floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks d=
own
like age and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture over the great chimney-
piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flut=
ters
it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunit=
y to
draw it over her. Higher and darker rises shadow on the wall--now a red glo=
om
on the ceiling--now the fire is out.
All that prospect, which from the terrace look=
ed
so near, has moved solemnly away and changed--not the first nor the last of
beautiful things that look so near and will so change--into a distant phant=
om.
Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the garden
are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses as if they were
each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to separate them, and to gli=
mmer
here and there in horizontal lines behind their stems, and to make the aven=
ue a
pavement of light among high cathedral arches fantastically broken.
Now the moon is high; and the great house, nee=
ding
habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awfu=
l,
stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the soli=
tary
bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every
corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is
reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everyth=
ing
can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes,
when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from
stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of he=
ads
inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the long
drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be
disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands
raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs.
‘She is not well, ma'am,’ says a g=
room
in Mrs Rouncewell's audience-chamber.
‘My Lady not well! What's the matter?=
217;
‘Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am,
since she was last here-- I don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she=
was
here as a bird of passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and=
has
kept her room a good deal.’
‘Chesney Wold, Thomas,’ rejoins the
housekeeper with proud complacency, ‘will set my Lady up! There is no
finer air and no healthier soil in the world!’
Thomas may have his own personal opinions on t=
his
subject, probably hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from=
the
nape of his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and
retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.
This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler
shark. Next evening, down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest
retinue, and down come the cousins and others from all the points of the
compass. Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men
with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the country on w=
hich
Doodle is at present throwing himself in an auriferous and malty shower, but
who are merely persons of a restless disposition and never do anything
anywhere.
On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds
the cousins useful. A better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the
Hunt at dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than t=
he
other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and there, a=
nd
show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard to find. Volumnia =
is a
little dim, but she is of the true descent; and there are many who apprecia=
te
her sprightly conversation, her French conundrums so old as to have become =
in
the cycles of time almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock =
in
to dinner, or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national
occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is constantly se=
en
hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and unpensioning country.
My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the =
numerous
guests, and being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at
all the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other melancholy
pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir Leicester, he conceive=
s it
utterly impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any o=
ne
who has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of
sublime satisfaction, he moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerato=
r.
Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter
over roadside turf, away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves
and hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for the
boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester holds forth
after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no occupation in life present=
the
appearance of being rather busy. Daily Volumnia has a little cousinly talk =
with
Sir Leicester on the state of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is dispo=
sed
to conclude that Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought he=
r.
‘How are we getting on?’ says Miss
Volumnia, clasping her hands. ‘
The mighty business is nearly over by this tim=
e,
and Doodle will throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leice=
ster
has just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright particular
star surrounded by clouds of cousins.
‘Volumnia,’ replies Sir Leicester,=
who
has a list in his hand, ‘we are doing tolerably.’
‘Only tolerably!’
Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester
always has his own particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual scree=
ned
seat near it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who
should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must not be
understood as a common expression, ‘Volumnia, we are doing tolerably.=
’
‘At least there is no opposition to YOU,=
’
Volumnia asserts with confidence.
‘No, Volumnia. This distracted country h=
as
lost its senses in many respects, I grieve to say, but--’
‘It is not so mad as that. I am glad to =
hear
it!’
Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her=
to
favour. Sir Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to sa=
y to
himself, ‘A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
precipitate.’
In fact, as to this question of opposition, the
fair Dedlock's observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions
always delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale
order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to him he=
treats
as retail orders of less importance, merely sending down the men and signif=
ying
to the tradespeople, ‘You will have the goodness to make these materi=
als
into two members of Parliament and to send them home when done.’
‘I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many
places the people have shown a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the
government has been of a most determined and most implacable description.=
8217;
‘W-r-retches!’ says Volumnia.
‘Even,’ proceeds Sir Leicester,
glancing at the circumjacent cousins on sofas and ottomans, ‘even in
many--in fact, in most--of those places in which the government has carried=
it
against a faction--’
(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are alw=
ays
a faction with the Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the s=
ame
position towards the Coodleites.)
‘--Even in them I am shocked, for the cr=
edit
of Englishmen, to be constrained to inform you that the party has not trium=
phed
without being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,’ says Sir Leicest=
er,
eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation, ‘=
;hundreds
of thousands of pounds!’
If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of b=
eing
a trifle too innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely w=
ell
with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and pearl
necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, ‘What for?’=
‘Volumnia,’ remonstrates Sir Leice=
ster
with his utmost severity. ‘Volumnia!’
‘No, no, I don't mean what for,’ c=
ries
Volumnia with her favourite little scream. ‘How stupid I am! I mean w=
hat
a pity!’
‘I am glad,’ returns Sir Leicester=
, ‘that
you do mean what a pity.’
Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that t=
he
shocking people ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party=
.
‘I am glad, Volumnia,’ repeats Sir
Leicester, unmindful of these mollifying sentiments, ‘that you do mean
what a pity. It is disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though
inadvertently and without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'w=
hat
for?' let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good
sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere.’
Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to obs=
erve
a crushing aspect towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these
necessary expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some graceless jo=
kers
have consequently suggested the omission from the Church service of the
ordinary supplication in behalf of the High Court of Parliament and have
recommended instead that the prayers of the congregation be requested for s=
ix
hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
‘I suppose,’ observes Volumnia, ha=
ving
taken a little time to recover her spirits after her late castigation, R=
16;I
suppose Mr Tulkinghorn has been worked to death.’
‘I don't know,’ says Sir Leicester,
opening his eyes, ‘why Mr Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I do=
n't
know what Mr Tulkinghorn's engagements may be. He is not a candidate.’=
;
Volumnia had thought he might have been employ=
ed.
Sir Leicester could desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed
again, suggests, by somebody--to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leiceste=
r is
not aware that any client of Mr Tulkinghorn has been in need of his assista=
nce.
Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her
arm upon its cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling=
on
the park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned.
A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of
extreme debility now observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that
Tulkinghorn had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout
something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly jawlly thi=
ng
if Tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that Coodle man was floored.
Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon, that Mr Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. = My Lady turns her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.<= o:p>
Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is
come. He is so original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for
knowing all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded t=
hat
he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge, and wears sho=
rt
aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with candlesticks and trowels. These
lively remarks the fair Dedlock delivers in her youthful manner, while maki=
ng a
purse.
‘He has not been here once,’ she a= dds, ‘since I came. I really had some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had almost made up my mind that he was dead.’<= o:p>
It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it
may be the darker gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, a=
s if
she thought, ‘I would he were!’
‘Mr Tulkinghorn,’ says Sir Leicest=
er, ‘is
always welcome here and always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable
person, and deservedly respected.’
The debilitated cousin supposes he is ‘'=
normously
rich fler.’
‘He has a stake in the country,’ s=
ays
Sir Leicester, ‘I have no doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, a=
nd
he associates almost on a footing of equality with the highest society.R=
17;
Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.=
‘Good gracious, what's that?’ cries
Volumnia with her little withered scream.
‘A rat,’ says my Lady. ‘And =
they
have shot him.’
Enter Mr Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries wi=
th
lamps and candles.
‘No, no,’ says Sir Leicester, R=
16;I
think not. My Lady, do you object to the twilight?’
On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
‘Volumnia?’
Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to =
sit
and talk in the dark.
‘Then take them away,’ says Sir
Leicester. ‘Tulkinghorn, I beg your pardon. How do you do?’
Mr Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease
advances, renders his passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's han=
d,
and subsides into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communica=
te,
on the opposite side of the Baronet's little newspaper-table. Sir Leicester=
is
apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will take cold at that open
window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. =
Sir
Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his seat. Mr
Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff.
‘Now,’ says Sir Leicester. ‘=
How
has that contest gone?’
‘Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a
chance. They have brought in both their people. You are beaten out of all
reason. Three to one.’
It is a part of Mr Tulkinghorn's policy and
mastery to have no political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he sa=
ys ‘you’
are beaten, and not ‘we.’
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia
never heard of such a thing. 'The debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of
thing that's sure tapn slongs votes--giv'n--Mob.
‘It's the place, you know,’ Mr
Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the fast-increasing darkness when there is
silence again, ‘where they wanted to put up Mrs Rouncewell's son.R=
17;
‘A proposal which, as you correctly info=
rmed
me at the time, he had the becoming taste and perception,’ observes S=
ir
Leicester, ‘to decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of t=
he
sentiments expressed by Mr Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in
this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I am gl=
ad
to acknowledge.’
‘Ha!’ says Mr Tulkinghorn. ‘=
It
did not prevent him from being very active in this election, though.’=
Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp befo=
re
speaking. ‘Did I understand you? Did you say that Mr Rouncewell had b=
een
very active in this election?’
‘Uncommonly active.’
‘Against--’
‘Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very
good speaker. Plain and emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great
influence. In the business part of the proceedings he carried all before hi=
m.’
It is evident to the whole company, though nob=
ody
can see him, that Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
‘And he was much assisted,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, ‘by his son.’
‘By his son, sir?’ repeats Sir
Leicester with awful politeness.
‘By his son.’
‘The son who wished to marry the young w=
oman
in my Lady's service?’
‘That son. He has but one.’
‘Then upon my honour,’ says Sir
Leicester after a terrific pause during which he has been heard to snort and
felt to stare, ‘then upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation=
and
principles, the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters have--=
a--
obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion by which things =
are
held together!’
General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia
thinks it is really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in a=
nd
do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks--country's going--
Dayvle--steeple-chase pace.
‘I beg,’ says Sir Leicester in a
breathless condition, ‘that we may not comment further on this
circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My Lady, let me suggest in reference =
to
that young woman--’
‘I have no intention,’ observes my
Lady from her window in a low but decided tone, ‘of parting with her.=
’
‘That was not my meaning,’ returns=
Sir
Leicester. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. I would suggest that as you
think her worthy of your patronage, you should exert your influence to keep=
her
from these dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done =
in
such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve her f=
or a
better fate. You might point out to her that she probably would, in good ti=
me,
find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would not be--’ Sir Leices=
ter
adds, after a moment's consideration, ‘dragged from the altars of her
forefathers.’
These remarks he offers with his unvarying
politeness and deference when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely
moves her head in reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a
little stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.
‘It is worthy of remark,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, ‘however, that these people are, in their way, very prou=
d.’
‘Proud?’ Sir Leicester doubts his
hearing.
‘I should not be surprised if they all
voluntarily abandoned the girl--yes, lover and all--instead of her abandoni=
ng them,
supposing she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances.’
‘Well!’ says Sir Leicester
tremulously. ‘Well! You should know, Mr Tulkinghorn. You have been am=
ong
them.’
‘Really, Sir Leicester,’ returns t=
he
lawyer, ‘I state the fact. Why, I could tell you a story--with Lady
Dedlock's permission.’
Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchante=
d. A
story! Oh, he is going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia
hopes?
‘No. Real flesh and blood.’ Mr
Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and repeats with some little emphasis graf=
ted
upon his usual monotony, ‘Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir
Leicester, these particulars have only lately become known to me. They are =
very
brief. They exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. L=
ady
Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?’
By the light of the fire, which is low, he can=
be
seen looking towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock c=
an
be seen, perfectly still.
‘A townsman of this Mrs Rouncewell, a ma=
n in
exactly parallel circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a
daughter who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great
lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your condition,
Sir Leicester.’
Sir Leicester condescendingly says, ‘Yes=
, Mr
Tulkinghorn,’ implying that then she must have appeared of very
considerable moral dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.
‘The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and=
had
a liking for the girl, and treated her with great kindness, and kept her al=
ways
near her. Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which s=
he
had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been engaged to
marry a young rake--he was a captain in the army-- nothing connected with w=
hom
came to any good. She never did marry him, but she gave birth to a child of
which he was the father.’
By the light of the fire he can be seen looking
towards the moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profil=
e,
perfectly still.
‘The captain in the army being dead, she
believed herself safe; but a train of circumstances with which I need not
trouble you led to discovery. As I received the story, they began in an
imprudence on her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which sh=
ows
how difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be always
guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you may suppose; I
leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband's grief. But that is not t=
he
present point. When Mr Rouncewell's townsman heard of the disclosure, he no
more allowed the girl to be patronized and honoured than he would have suff=
ered
her to be trodden underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he
indignantly took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sens=
e of
the honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not the
least. He resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been the commone=
st
of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock will excuse its painful
nature.’
There are various opinions on the merits, more=
or
less conflicting with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe t=
here
ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The
majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in few wor=
ds--’no
business--Rouncewell's fernal townsman.’ Sir Leicester generally refe=
rs
back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of
his own.
There is not much conversation in all, for late
hours have been kept at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere
began, and this is the first night in many on which the family have been al=
one.
It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr Tulkinghorn to ring for candles. =
Then
the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and then Lady Dedlock for =
the
first time moves, and rises, and comes forward to a table for a glass of wa=
ter.
Winking cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volu=
mnia
(always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild
sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked a=
fter
by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side =
of
that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of contrast.
Mr Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a li=
ttle
breathed by the journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an express=
ion
on his face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were,=
in
his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly
self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an injusti=
ce
as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any romantic weakness.=
He
is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power u=
pon
him as he loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand and
holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down.
There is a capacious writing-table in the room=
on
which is a pretty large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, =
his
reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to it, and =
it
would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or so upon these cla=
ims
on his attention before going to bed. But he happens not to be in a business
mind. After a glance at the documents awaiting his notice--with his head be=
nt
low over the table, the old man's sight for print or writing being defectiv=
e at
night--he opens the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he ag=
ain
walks slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool =
may
have any need to subside, from the story he has related downstairs.
The time was once when men as knowing as Mr
Tulkinghorn would walk on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the=
sky
to read their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though t=
heir
brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be seeking his o=
wn
star as he methodically turns and turns upon the leads, it should be but a =
pale
one to be so rustily represented below. If he be tracing out his destiny, t=
hat
may be written in other characters nearer to his hand.
As he paces the leads with his eyes most proba=
bly
as high above his thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly
stopped in passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of=
his
room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite the
window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the night being
warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These eyes that meet his own
are looking in through the glass from the corridor outside. He knows them w=
ell.
The blood has not flushed into his face so suddenly and redly for many a lo=
ng
year as when he recognizes Lady Dedlock.
He steps into the room, and she comes in too,
closing both the doors behind her. There is a wild disturbance--is it fear =
or
anger?--in her eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked
downstairs two hours ago.
Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be su=
re.
Both might be as pale, both as intent.
‘Lady Dedlock?’
She does not speak at first, nor even when she=
has
slowly dropped into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, l=
ike
two pictures.
‘Why have you told my story to so many
persons?’
‘Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to
inform you that I knew it.’
‘How long have you known it?’
‘I have suspected it a long while--fully
known it a little while.’
‘Months?’
‘Days.’
He stands before her with one hand on a chair-=
back
and the other in his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he=
has
stood before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal politeness,
the same composed deference that might as well be defiance; the whole man t=
he
same dark, cold object, at the same distance, which nothing has ever
diminished.
‘Is this true concerning the poor girl?&=
#8217;
He slightly inclines and advances his head as =
not
quite understanding the question.
‘You know what you related. Is it true? =
Do
her friends know my story also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon=
the
walls and cried in the streets?’
So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three
contending. What power this woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr
Tulkinghorn's thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged g=
rey
eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.
‘No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetic=
al
case, arising out of Sir Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with=
so
high a hand. But it would be a real case if they knew--what we know.’=
‘Then they do not know it yet?’
‘No.’
‘Can I save the poor girl from injury be=
fore
they know it?’
‘Really, Lady Dedlock,’ Mr Tulking= horn replies, ‘I cannot give a satisfactory opinion on that point.’<= o:p>
And he thinks, with the interest of attentive
curiosity, as he watches the struggle in her breast, ‘The power and f=
orce
of this woman are astonishing!’
‘Sir,’ she says, for the moment
obliged to set her lips with all the energy she has, that she may speak
distinctly, ‘I will make it plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetic=
al
case. I anticipated it, and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I
saw Mr Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the powe=
r of
seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by having for=
a
moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my great and
distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or I should rather
say--no longer belonging to this place--I had, and if you can find so much
consideration for the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be
very sensible of your mercy.’
Mr Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws t=
his
off with a shrug of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little m=
ore.
‘You have prepared me for my exposure, a=
nd I
thank you for that too. Is there anything that you require of me? Is there =
any
claim that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husba=
nd
in obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery? I
will write anything, here and now, that you will dictate. I am ready to do =
it.’
And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchf=
ul
of the firm hand with which she takes the pen!
‘I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. P=
ray
spare yourself.’
‘I have long expected this, as you know.=
I
neither wish to spare myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to =
me
than you have done. Do what remains now.’
‘Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be do=
ne.
I will take leave to say a few words when you have finished.’
Their need for watching one another should be =
over
now, but they do it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the
opened window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and t=
he
wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where are the dig=
ger
and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add the last great secret to
the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn existence? Is the man born yet, is the
spade wrought yet? Curious questions to consider, more curious perhaps not =
to
consider, under the watching stars upon a summer night.
‘Of repentance or remorse or any feeling=
of
mine,’ Lady Dedlock presently proceeds, ‘I say not a word. If I
were not dumb, you would be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears.&=
#8217;
He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she
sweeps it away with her disdainful hand.
‘Of other and very different things I co=
me
to speak to you. My jewels are all in their proper places of keeping. They =
will
be found there. So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready mo=
ney
I had with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own dr=
ess,
in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be henceforward lost. Ma=
ke
this known. I leave no other charge with you.’
‘Excuse me, Lady Dedlock,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. ‘I am not sure that I understand you. You
want--’
‘To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney
Wold to-night. I go this hour.’
Mr Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but=
he,
without moving hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shi=
rt-
frill, shakes his head.
‘What? Not go as I have said?’
‘No, Lady Dedlock,’ he very calmly
replies.
‘Do you know the relief that my
disappearance will be? Have you forgotten the stain and blot upon this plac=
e,
and where it is, and who it is?’
‘No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means.R=
17;
Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the i=
nner
door and has it in her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring h=
and
or foot or raising his voice, ‘Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop
and hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the alarm-bell =
and
rouse the house. And then I must speak out before every guest and servant,
every man and woman, in it.’
He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, a=
nd
puts her hand confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, =
but
when so practised an eye as Mr Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment in
such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.
He promptly says again, ‘Have the goodne=
ss
to hear me, Lady Dedlock,’ and motions to the chair from which she has
risen. She hesitates, but he motions again, and she sits down.
‘The relations between us are of an
unfortunate description, Lady Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I =
will
not apologize for them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester i=
s so
well known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have appea=
red
in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery.’
‘Sir,’ she returns without looking=
up
from the ground on which her eyes are now fixed, ‘I had better have g=
one.
It would have been far better not to have detained me. I have no more to sa=
y.’
‘Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a lit=
tle
more to hear.’
‘I wish to hear it at the window, then. I
can't breathe where I am.’
His jealous glance as she walks that way betra=
ys
an instant's misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, a=
nd
dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the terrace bel=
ow.
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 mov=
ed,
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.’
He pauses, but she makes no reply.
‘Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an
important subject. You are honouring me with your attention?’
‘I am.’
‘Thank you. I might have known it from w=
hat
I have seen of your strength of character. I ought not to have asked the
question, but I have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, a=
s I
go on. The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester.’=
‘Then why,’ she asks in a low voice
and without removing her gloomy look from those distant stars, ‘do you
detain me in his house?’
‘Because he IS the consideration. Lady
Dedlock, I have no occasion to tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud =
man,
that his reliance upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of t=
he
sky would not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his
wife.’
She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stan=
ds
as unflinchingly as ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest compa=
ny.
‘I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that wi=
th
anything short of this case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root=
up
by means of my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate=
as
to shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester's trust and confide=
nce
in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that he could doubt
(that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing can prepare him for =
the
blow.’
‘Not my flight?’ she returned. =
216;Think
of it again.’
‘Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread=
the
whole truth, and a hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be
impossible to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of.=
’
There is a quiet decision in his reply which
admits of no remonstrance.
‘When I speak of Sir Leicester being the
sole consideration, he and the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the
baronetcy, Sir Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors =
and
his patrimony’--Mr Tulkinghorn very dry here--’are, I need not =
say
to you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable.’
‘Go on!’
‘Therefore,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn,
pursuing his case in his jog- trot style, ‘I have much to consider. T=
his
is to be hushed up if it can be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven =
out
of his wits or laid upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him
to-morrow morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? =
What
could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the
wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you are to
remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at all consider=
in
this business) but your husband, Lady Dedlock, your husband.’
He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom
more emphatic or animated.
‘There is another point of view,’ =
he
continues, ‘in which the case presents itself. Sir Leicester is devot=
ed
to you almost to infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that
infatuation, even knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it
might be so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common
sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into account, an=
d it
combines to render a decision very difficult.’
She stands looking out at the same stars witho=
ut a
word. They are beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze =
her.
‘My experience teaches me,’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, who has by this time got his hands in his pockets and is going=
on
in his business consideration of the matter like a machine. ‘My
experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do
far better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of
their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester married, and so I always ha=
ve
thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided by circumstances. In
the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own counsel, and I will keep mine=
.’
‘I am to drag my present life on, holding
its pains at your pleasure, day by day?’ she asks, still looking at t=
he
distant sky.
‘Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock.̵=
7;
‘It is necessary, you think, that I shou=
ld
be so tied to the stake?’
‘I am sure that what I recommend is
necessary.’
‘I am to remain on this gaudy platform on
which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall bene=
ath
me when you give the signal?’ she said slowly.
‘Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I sha=
ll
take no step without forewarning you.’
She asks all her questions as if she were
repeating them from memory or calling them over in her sleep. ‘We are=
to
meet as usual?’
‘Precisely as usual, if you please.̵=
7;
‘And I am to hide my guilt, as I have do=
ne
so many years?’
‘As you have done so many years. I should
not have made that reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you
that your secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and =
no
better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never wholly
trusted each other.’
She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for
some little time before asking, ‘Is there anything more to be sald
to-night?’
‘Why,’ Mr Tulkinghorn returns
methodically as he softly rubs his hands, ‘I should like to be assure=
d of
your acquiescence in my arrangements, Lady Dedlock.’
‘You may be assured of it.’
‘Good. And I would wish in conclusion to
remind you, as a business precaution, in case it should be necessary to rec=
all
the fact in any communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our inter=
view
I have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's feelings
and honour and the family reputation. I should have been happy to have made
Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if the case had admitted of it;
but unfortunately it does not.’
‘I can attest your fidelity, sir.’=
Both before and after saying it she remains
absorbed, but at length moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acqui=
red
presence, towards the door. Mr Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as =
he
would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago, and makes
his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an ordinary look that he
receives from the handsome face as it goes into the darkness, and it is not=
an
ordinary movement, though a very slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy.
But as he reflects when he is left alone, the woman has been putting no com=
mon
constraint upon herself.
He would know it all the better if he saw the
woman pacing her own rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back
face, her hands clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. =
He
would think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down f=
or
hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the faithful step
upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled air, draws the
window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And truly when the stars go =
out
and the wan day peeps into the turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he
looks as if the digger and the spade were both commissioned and would soon =
be
digging.
The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester
pardoning the repentant country in a majestically condescending dream; and =
at
the cousins entering on various public employments, principally receipt of
salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty thousand pou=
nds
upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false teeth like a pianoforte too
full of keys, long the admiration of Bath and the terror of every other
community. Also into rooms high in the roof, and into offices in court-yard=
s,
and over stables, where humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodge=
s,
and in holy matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing
everything up with it--the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the earth,
the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and creeping things, =
the
gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold emerald velvet where the roller
passes, the smoke of the great kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and h=
igh
into the lightsome air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr Tulkinghorn's
unconscious head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock=
are
in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in Lincolnsh=
ire.
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 pla=
ces
is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it were n=
ext
door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he had never been ou=
t of
Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his dress before the journey nor t=
alks
of it afterwards. He melted out of his turret-room this morning, just as no=
w,
in the late twilight, he melts into his own square.
Like a dingy London bird among the birds at ro=
ost
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 fa=
ded,
dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experienc=
e of
genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corner=
s 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 mell=
owed
port-wine half a century old.
The lamplighter is skipping up and down his la=
dder
on Mr Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble myste=
ries
arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the door- steps and is glidi=
ng
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 w=
as
just giving you up, sir, and going home.’
‘Aye? What is it? What do you want with =
me?’
‘Well, sir,’ says Mr Snagsby, hold=
ing
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, l=
eans
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 up=
on
it--to the foreigner, sir!’
Mr Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. =
8216;What
foreigner?’
‘The foreign female, sir. French, if I d=
on'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.=
217;
‘Indeed, sir?’ Mr Snagsby coughs h=
is
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,&=
#8217;
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 expecte=
d,
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 sho=
uld
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 plainti=
ve
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 nat=
ive
sound I am sure--caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quic=
k,
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 occupat=
ion
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 dou=
bt
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, &=
#8216;I
never had an idea of a foreign female, except as being formerly connected w=
ith
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 a=
ll,
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 apologe=
tic
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 da=
rk
to see much of the Allegory overhead 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 s=
mall
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 yo=
u,
is it? You appear at a good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! Wha=
t do
you want?’
He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in t=
he
clerk's hall and taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these word=
s of
welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her lips tigh=
tly
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 tha=
t,
he is not for you.’
‘Quite right, and quite true.’
‘Not true. Lies!’
At times there is a suddenness in the manner of
Mademoiselle Hortense so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that s=
uch
subject involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr Tulkinghorn's case at
present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up (but st=
ill
looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and shaking her head.=
‘Now, mistress,’ says the lawyer,
tapping the key hastily upon the chimney-piece. ‘If you have anything=
to
say, say it, say it.’
‘Sir, you have not use me well. You have
been mean and shabby.’
‘Mean and shabby, eh?’ returns the
lawyer, rubbing his nose with the key.
‘Yes. What is it that I tell you? You kn=
ow
you have. You have attrapped me--catched me--to give you information; you h=
ave
asked me to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, y=
ou
have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?’
Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring.
‘You are a vixen, a vixen!’ Mr
Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he looks distrustfully at her, then he
replies, ‘Well, wench, well. I paid you.’
‘You paid me!’ she repeats with fi=
erce
disdain. ‘Two sovereign! I have not change them, I re-fuse them, I
des-pise them, I throw them from me!’ Which she literally does, taking
them out of her bosom as she speaks and flinging them with such violence on=
the
floor that they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into cor=
ners
and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.
‘Now!’ says Mademoiselle Hortense,
darkening her large eyes again. ‘You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes=
!’
Mr Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while
she entertains herself with a sarcastic laugh.
‘You must be rich, my fair friend,’=
; he
composedly observes, ‘to throw money about in that way!’
‘I AM rich,’ she returns. ‘I=
am
very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of all my heart. You know that.’
‘Know it? How should I know it?’
‘Because you have known it perfectly bef=
ore
you prayed me to give you that information. Because you have known perfectly
that I was en-r-r-r-raged!’ It appears impossible for mademoiselle to
roll the letter ‘r’ sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding =
that
she assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and setting =
all
her teeth.
‘Oh! I knew that, did I?’ says Mr
Tulkinghorn, examining the wards of the key.
‘Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You=
have
made sure of me because you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her.’
Mademoiselle folds her arms and throws this last remark at him over one of =
her
shoulders.
‘Having said this, have you anything els=
e to
say, mademoiselle?’
‘I am not yet placed. Place me well. Fin=
d me
a good condition! If you cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to
pursue her, to chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you
well, and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?’
‘You appear to know a good deal,’ =
Mr
Tulkinghorn retorts.
‘Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to
believe, like a child, that I come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy =
only
to decide a little bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!’ In this reply, =
down
to the word ‘wager’ inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically
polite and tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defi=
ant
scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly shut and
staringly wide open.
‘Now, let us see,’ says Mr Tulking=
horn,
tapping his chin with the key and looking imperturbably at her, ‘how =
this
matter stands.’
‘Ah! Let us see,’ mademoiselle
assents, with many angry and tight nods of her head.
‘You come here to make a remarkably mode=
st
demand, which you have just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come
again.’
‘And again,’ says mademoiselle with
more tight and angry nods. ‘And yet again. And yet again. And many ti=
mes
again. In effect, for ever!’
‘And not only here, but you will go to Mr
Snagsby's too, perhaps? That visit not succeeding either, you will go again
perhaps?’
‘And again,’ repeats mademoiselle,
cataleptic with determination. ‘And yet again. And yet again. And many
times again. In effect, for ever!’
‘Very well. Now, Mademoiselle Hortense, = let me recommend you to take the candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it behind the clerk's partition in the corner yonder.’<= o:p>
She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and
stands her ground with folded arms.
‘You will not, eh?’
‘No, I will not!’
‘So much the poorer you; so much the ric=
her
I! Look, mistress, this is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but
the keys of prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction
(where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very strong a=
nd
heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of your spirit and
activity would find it an inconvenience to have one of those keys turned up=
on
her for any length of time. What do you think?’
‘I think,’ mademoiselle replies
without any action and in a clear, obliging voice, ‘that you are a
miserable wretch.’
‘Probably,’ returns Mr Tulkinghorn,
quietly blowing his nose. ‘But I don't ask what you think of myself; I
ask what you think of the prison.’
‘Nothing. What does it matter to me?R=
17;
‘Why, it matters this much, mistress,=
217;
says the lawyer, deliberately putting away his handkerchief and adjusting h=
is
frill; ‘the law is so despotic here that it interferes to prevent any=
of
our good English citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits agai=
nst
his desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold of=
the
troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard discipline. Turns the
key upon her, mistress.’ Illustrating with the cellar-key.
‘Truly?’ returns mademoiselle in t=
he
same pleasant voice. ‘That is droll! But--my faith!--still what does =
it
matter to me?’
‘My fair friend,’ says Mr Tulkingh=
orn,
‘make another visit here, or at Mr Snagsby's, and you shall learn.=
217;
‘In that case you will send me to the
prison, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
It would be contradictory for one in
mademoiselle's state of agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwis=
e a
tigerish expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would ma=
ke
her do it.
‘In a word, mistress,’ says Mr Tul=
kinghorn,
‘I am sorry to be unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited
here--or there--again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry =
is
great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an ignomini=
ous
manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench.’
‘I will prove you,’ whispers
mademoiselle, stretching out her hand, ‘I will try if you dare to do =
it!’
‘And if,’ pursues the lawyer witho=
ut
minding her, ‘I place you in that good condition of being locked up in
jail, it will be some time before you find yourself at liberty again.’=
;
‘I will prove you,’ repeats
mademoiselle in her former whisper.
‘And now,’ proceeds the lawyer, st=
ill
without minding her, ‘you had better go. Think twice before you come =
here
again.’
‘Think you,’ she answers, ‘t=
wice
two hundred times!’
‘You were dismissed by your lady, you kn=
ow,’
Mr Tulkinghorn observes, following her out upon the staircase, ‘as the
most implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and take
warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I threaten, I
will do, mistress.’
She goes down without answering or looking beh=
ind
her. When she is gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-cove=
red
bottle, devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and t=
hen,
as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious
Roman pointing from the ceiling.
It matters little now how much I thought of my
living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not
venture to approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense=
of
the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears =
of
increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an
unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always conquer that terror of mys=
elf
which had seized me when I first knew the secret. At no time did I dare to
utter her name. I felt as if I did not even dare to hear it. If the
conversation anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it somet=
imes
naturally did, I tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something =
that
I knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did these
things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of, but I did
them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might lead to her betrayal,
and to her betrayal through me.
It matters little now how often I recalled the
tones of my mother's voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as=
I
so longed to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should=
be
so new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention of =
my
mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house in town, lo=
ving
it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the theatre when my mother=
was
there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder before the great company=
of
all degrees that any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. It is al=
l,
all over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself which=
is
not a story of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that litt=
le
and go on.
When we were settled at home again, Ada and I =
had
many conversations with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear
girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, =
but
she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him even for
that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word=
of
reproof. ‘Rick is mistaken, my dear,’ he would say to her. R=
16;Well,
well! We have all been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you a=
nd
time to set him right.’
We knew afterwards what we suspected then, tha=
t he
did not trust to time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That=
he
had written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and
persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard was deaf=
and
blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends when the Chancery suit=
was
over. If he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his ut=
most
to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured.
Suspicion and misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work
the suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his unvarying
reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession of his whole natu=
re
that it was impossible to place any consideration before him which he did n=
ot,
with a distorted kind of reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing
what he did. ‘So that it is even more mischievous,’ said my
guardian once to me, ‘to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to
leave him alone.’
I took one of these opportunities of mentionin=
g my
doubts of Mr Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.
‘Adviser!’ returned my guardian,
laughing, ‘My dear, who would advise with Skimpole?’
‘Encourager would perhaps have been a be=
tter
word,’ said I.
‘Encourager!’ returned my guardian
again. ‘Who could be encouraged by Skimpole?’
‘Not Richard?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Such an
unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an
amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station
towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a ch=
ild
as Skimpole.’
‘Pray, cousin John,’ said Ada, who=
had
just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, ‘what made him such a
child?’
‘What made him such a child?’ inqu=
ired
my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss.
‘Yes, cousin John.’
‘Why,’ he slowly replied, rougheni=
ng
his head more and more, ‘he is all sentiment, and--and susceptibility,
and--and sensibility, and-- and imagination. And these qualities are not
regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in=
his
youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training t=
hat
would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he is. Hey?=
217;
said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us hopefully. ‘What do
you think, you two?’
Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a
pity he should be an expense to Richard.
‘So it is, so it is,’ returned my
guardian hurriedly. ‘That must not be. We must arrange that. I must
prevent it. That will never do.’
And I said I thought it was to be regretted th=
at
he had ever introduced Richard to Mr Vholes for a present of five pounds.
‘Did he?’ said my guardian with a
passing shade of vexation on his face. ‘But there you have the man. T=
here
you have the man! There is nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no id=
ea
of the value of money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with=
Mr
Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and thinks
nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said I.
‘Exactly!’ cried my guardian, quite
triumphant. ‘There you have the man! If he had meant any harm by it or
was conscious of any harm in it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he doe=
s it
in mere simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll
understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and caution h=
im
on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an infant!’
In pursuance of this plan, we went into London=
on
an early day and presented ourselves at Mr Skimpole's door.
He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Som=
ers
Town, where there were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walki=
ng
about in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant
than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody always
paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for business rendered it
particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't know; but he had occupied t=
he
same house some years. It was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our=
expectation.
Two or three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the
knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge
from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps were the
only signs of its being inhabited.
A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr Jarndyce (indeed Ada an= d I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of her wage= s), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door be= ing in a disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs?<= o:p>
We went upstairs to the first floor, still see=
ing
no other furniture than the dirty footprints. Mr Jarndyce without further
ceremony entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not=
at
all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large
footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of
pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sk=
etches
and pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered
and wafered over, but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the
table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and th=
ere
was a bottle of light wine. Mr Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in a
dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup--it was =
then
about mid-day--and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the balcony.
He was not in the least disconcerted by our
appearance, but rose and received us in his usual airy manner.
‘Here I am, you see!’ he said when=
we
were seated, not without some little difficulty, the greater part of the ch=
airs
being broken. ‘Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want =
legs
of beef and mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coff=
ee,
and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but they rem=
ind
me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere an=
imal
satisfaction!’
‘This is our friend's consulting-room (or
would be, if he ever prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,’ said my
guardian to us.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Skimpole, turning h=
is
bright face about, ‘this is the bird's cage. This is where the bird l=
ives
and sings. They pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he
sings, he sings!’
He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radi=
ant
way, ‘He sings! Not an ambitious note, but still he sings.’
‘These are very fine,’ said my
guardian. ‘A present?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘No! Some
amiable gardener sells them. His man wanted to know, when he brought them l=
ast
evening, whether he should wait for the money. 'Really, my friend,' I said,=
'I
think not--if your time is of any value to you.' I suppose it was, for he w=
ent
away.’
My guardian looked at us with a smile, as thou=
gh
he asked us, ‘Is it possible to be worldly with this baby?’
‘This is a day,’ said Mr Skimpole,
gaily taking a little claret in a tumbler, ‘that will ever be remembe=
red
here. We shall call it Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my
daughters. I have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a
Sentiment daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.
They'll be enchanted.’
He was going to summon them when my guardian
interposed and asked him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to h=
im
first. ‘My dear Jarndyce,’ he cheerfully replied, going back to=
his
sofa, ‘as many moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never
know what o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,
you'll tell me? Certainly. But we DON'T get on in life. We don't pretend to=
do
it.’
My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying=
, ‘You
hear him?’
‘Now, Harold,’ he began, ‘the
word I have to say relates to Rick.’
‘The dearest friend I have!’ retur=
ned Mr
Skimpole cordially. ‘I suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, =
as
he is not on terms with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of yout=
hful
poetry, and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him.&=
#8217;
The engaging frankness with which he made this
declaration really had a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardia=
n,
if not, for the moment, Ada too.
‘You are welcome to love him as much as =
you
like,’ returned Mr Jarndyce, ‘but we must save his pocket, Haro=
ld.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Skimpole. ‘His
pocket? Now you are coming to what I don't understand.’ Taking a litt=
le
more claret and dipping one of the cakes in it, he shook his head and smile=
d at
Ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to
understand.
‘If you go with him here or there,’ said my guardian plainly, ‘you must not let him pay for both.’<= o:p>
‘My dear Jarndyce,’ returned Mr
Skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the comicality of this idea, ‘=
;what
am I to do? If he takes me anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never =
have
any money. If I had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I sa=
y to
a man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know noth=
ing
about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue the subject with
any consideration for the man. I don't go about asking busy people what sev=
en
and sixpence is in Moorish--which I don't understand. Why should I go about
asking them what seven and sixpence is in Money--which I don't understand?&=
#8217;
‘Well,’ said my guardian, by no me=
ans
displeased with this artless reply, ‘if you come to any kind of
journeying with Rick, you must borrow the money of me (never breathing the
least allusion to that circumstance), and leave the calculation to him.R=
17;
‘My dear Jarndyce,’ returned Mr
Skimpole, ‘I will do anything to give you pleasure, but it seems an i=
dle
form--a superstition. Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear M=
iss
Summerson, I thought Mr Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only =
to
make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bill,=
or
to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money.̵=
7;
‘Indeed it is not so, sir,’ said A=
da. ‘He
is poor.’
‘No, really?’ returned Mr Skimpole
with his bright smile. ‘You surprise me.’
‘And not being the richer for trusting i=
n a
rotten reed,’ said my guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the
sleeve of Mr Skimpole's dressing-gown, ‘be you very careful not to
encourage him in that reliance, Harold.’
‘My dear good friend,’ returned Mr
Skimpole, ‘and my dear Miss Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how ca=
n I
do that? It's business, and I don't know business. It is he who encourages =
me.
He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects
before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire
them--as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell him so=
.’
The helpless kind of candour with which he
presented this before us, the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by
his innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own
protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the delightf=
ul
ease of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The more=
I
saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he
could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that
appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of=
his
having anything to do with any one for whom I cared.
Hearing that his examination (as he called it)=
was
now over, Mr Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daught=
ers
(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite delight=
ed
by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish character. He soon ca=
me
back, bringing with him the three young ladies and Mrs Skimpole, who had on=
ce
been a beauty but was now a delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a
complication of disorders.
‘This,’ said Mr Skimpole, ‘i=
s my
Beauty daughter, Arethusa--plays and sings odds and ends like her father. T=
his
is my Sentiment daughter, Laura--plays a little but don't sing. This is my
Comedy daughter, Kitty--sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little=
and
compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.’
Mrs Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would
have been glad to strike out this item in the family attainments. I also
thought that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she to=
ok
every opportunity of throwing in another.
‘It is pleasant,’ said Mr Skimpole,
turning his sprightly eyes from one to the other of us, ‘and it is
whimsically interesting to trace peculiarities in families. In this family =
we
are all children, and I am the youngest.’
The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of
him, were amused by this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.
‘My dears, it is true,’ said Mr
Skimpole, ‘is it not? So it is, and so it must be, because like the d=
ogs
in the hymn, 'it is our nature to.' Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine
administrative capacity and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It
will sound very strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know
nothing about chops in this house. But we don't, not the least. We can't co=
ok
anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We admire =
the
people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we don't quarrel with
them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live and let live, we say to th=
em.
Live upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!’
He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid a=
nd
really to mean what he said.
‘We have sympathy, my roses,’ said=
Mr
Skimpole, ‘sympathy for everything. Have we not?’
‘Oh, yes, papa!’ cried the three
daughters.
‘In fact, that is our family department,=
’
said Mr Skimpole, ‘in this hurly-burly of life. We are capable of loo=
king
on and of being interested, and we DO look on, and we
She looked very young indeed to be the mother =
of
two children, and I could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident
that the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as lit=
tle
haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in =
his
idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, I observed, in their
respective styles of wearing their hair, the Beauty daughter being in the
classic manner, the Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy
daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and
vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dres=
sed
to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.
Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and
found them wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr Jarndyce (who=
had
been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in the wind)
talked with Mrs Skimpole in a corner, where we could not help hearing the c=
hink
of money. Mr Skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us and had
withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose.
‘My roses,’ he said when he came b=
ack,
‘take care of mama. She is poorly to-day. By going home with Mr Jarnd=
yce
for a day or two, I shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It
has been tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.=
8217;
‘That bad man!’ said the Comedy
daughter.
‘At the very time when he knew papa was
lying ill by his wallflowers, looking at the blue sky,’ Laura complai=
ned.
‘And when the smell of hay was in the ai=
r!’
said Arethusa.
‘It showed a want of poetry in the man,&= #8217; Mr Skimpole assented, but with perfect good humour. ‘It was coarse. T= here was an absence of the finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have ta= ken great offence,’ he explained to us, ‘at an honest man--’<= o:p>
‘Not honest, papa. Impossible!’ th=
ey
all three protested.
‘At a rough kind of fellow--a sort of hu=
man
hedgehog rolled up,’ said Mr Skimpole, ‘who is a baker in this
neighbourhood and from whom we borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a
couple of arm- chairs, and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we
looked to a man who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person le=
nt
them, and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He
had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to t=
heir
being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I said, 'Can =
you,
at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an
arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object =
to
contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight?
Don't you KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' He was
unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being as pati=
ent
as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him. I said, 'Now, my
good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children of =
one
great mother, Nature. On this blooming summer morning here you see me' (I w=
as
on the sofa) 'with flowers before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless s=
ky
above me, the air full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by
our common brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublim=
e,
the absurd figure of an angry baker!' But he did,’ said Mr Skimpole,
raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; ‘he did interpose =
that
ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore I am very =
glad
to get out of his way and to go home with my friend Jarndyce.’
It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs
Skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this=
was
so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took
leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other asp=
ect
in which he showed himself and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind=
. We
had an opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went downstairs,
that his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house.
I could have no anticipation, and I had none, =
that
something very startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in w=
hat
ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was in such
spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to him and wonde=
r at
him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to the same fascination. As t=
o my
guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we
left Somers Town, veered completely round before we were a couple of miles =
from
it.
Whether of questionable childishness or not in=
any
other matters, Mr Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright
weather. In no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the
drawing-room before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet
looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and drinking
songs, Italian and German, by the score.
We were all assembled shortly before dinner, a=
nd
he was still at the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little stra=
ins
of music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruin=
ed
old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got
tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read aloud in a surpri=
sed voice,
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock!’
The visitor was in the room while it was yet
turning round with me and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I
should have hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddin=
ess,
to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it w=
as.
I heard my name and found that my guardian was presenting me before I could
move to a chair.
‘Pray be seated, Sir Leicester.’
‘Mr Jarndyce,’ said Sir Leicester =
in
reply as he bowed and seated himself, ‘I do myself the honour of call=
ing
here--’
‘You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester.=
217;
‘Thank you--of calling here on my road f=
rom
Lincolnshire to express my regret that any cause of complaint, however stro=
ng,
that I may have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been y=
our
host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should have
prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing
whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste at my ho=
use,
Chesney Wold.’
‘You are exceedingly obliging, Sir
Leicester, and on behalf of those ladies (who are present) and for myself, I
thank you very much.’
‘It is possible, Mr Jarndyce, that the
gentleman to whom, for the reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making
further allusion-- it is possible, Mr Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have
done me the honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to
believe that you would not have been received by my local establishment in
Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy, which its members are
instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen who present themselves at th=
at
house. I merely beg to observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse.’
My guardian delicately dismissed this remark
without making any verbal answer.
‘It has given me pain, Mr Jarndyce,̵=
7;
Sir Leicester weightily proceeded. ‘I assure you, sir, it has
given--me--pain--to learn from the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentl=
eman
who was in your company in that part of the county, and who would appear to
possess a cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some
such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that
attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them and w=
hich
some of them might possibly have repaid.’ Here he produced a card and
read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his eye-glass, ‘=
;Mr
Hirrold--Herald-- Harold--Skampling--Skumpling--I beg your pardon--Skimpole=
.’
‘This is Mr Harold Skimpole,’ said=
my
guardian, evidently surprised.
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Sir Leicester, =
216;I
am happy to meet Mr Skimpole and to have the opportunity of tendering my
personal regrets. I hope, sir, that when you again find yourself in my part=
of
the county, you will be under no similar sense of restraint.’
‘You are very obliging, Sir Leicester
Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall certainly give myself the pleasure and
advantage of another visit to your beautiful house. The owners of such plac=
es
as Chesney Wold,’ said Mr Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air,=
‘are
public benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful
objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all=
the
admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be ungrateful to our benefact=
ors.’
Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentim=
ent
highly. ‘An artist, sir?’
‘No,’ returned Mr Skimpole. ‘=
;A
perfectly idle man. A mere amateur.’
Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even m=
ore.
He hoped he might have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr Skimp=
ole
next came down into Lincolnshire. Mr Skimpole professed himself much flatte=
red
and honoured.
‘Mr Skimpole mentioned,’ pursued S=
ir
Leicester, addressing himself again to my guardian, ‘mentioned to the
housekeeper, who, as he may have observed, is an old and attached retainer =
of
the family--’
(‘That is, when I walked through the hou=
se
the other day, on the occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and
Miss Clare,’ Mr Skimpole airily explained to us.)
‘--That the friend with whom he had form=
erly
been staying there was Mr Jarndyce.’ Sir Leicester bowed to the beare=
r of
that name. ‘And hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I =
have
professed my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr
Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock, and in=
deed
claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as I learn from my =
Lady
herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I assure you, give--me--pain.=
’
‘Pray say no more about it, Sir Leiceste=
r,’
returned my guardian. ‘I am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of
your consideration. Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize f=
or
it.’
I had not once looked up. I had not seen the
visitor and had not even appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It
surprises me to find that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impress=
ion
on me as it passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and =
my
instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so distressing to=
me that
I thought I understood nothing, through the rushing in my head and the beat=
ing
of my heart.
‘I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock=
,’
said Sir Leicester, rising, ‘and my Lady informed me that she had had=
the
pleasure of exchanging a few words with Mr Jarndyce and his wards on the
occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the vicinity. Per=
mit
me, Mr Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to these ladies, the assurance I
have already tendered to Mr Skimpole. Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my
saying that it would afford me any gratification to hear that Mr Boythorn h=
ad
favoured my house with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to
that gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him.’
‘You know my old opinion of him,’ =
said
Mr Skimpole, lightly appealing to us. ‘An amiable bull who is determi=
ned
to make every colour scarlet!’
Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could n=
ot
possibly hear another word in reference to such an individual and took his
leave with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all
possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my self- command. It
had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to find when I went downst=
airs
again that they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before the gre=
at
Lincolnshire baronet.
By that time I had made up my mind that the pe=
riod
was come when I must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my be=
ing
brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, even o=
f Mr
Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and
obligations from her husband, was so painful that I felt I could no longer
guide myself without his assistance.
When we had retired for the night, and Ada and=
I
had had our usual talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and
sought my guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and=
as
I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his reading-l=
amp.
‘May I come in, guardian?’
‘Surely, little woman. What's the matter=
?’
‘Nothing is the matter. I thought I would
like to take this quiet time of saying a word to you about myself.’
He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put =
it
by, and turned his kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observi=
ng
that it wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before--on t=
hat
night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could readily
understand.
‘What concerns you, my dear Esther,̵=
7;
said he, ‘concerns us all. You cannot be more ready to speak than I a=
m to
hear.’
‘I know that, guardian. But I have such =
need
of your advice and support. Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-nigh=
t.’
He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, =
and
even a little alarmed.
‘Or how anxious I have been to speak to =
you,’
said I, ‘ever since the visitor was here to-day.’
‘The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester
Dedlock?’
‘Yes.’
He folded his arms and sat looking at me with =
an
air of the profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did=
not
know how to prepare him.
‘Why, Esther,’ said he, breaking i=
nto
a smile, ‘our visitor and you are the two last persons on earth I sho=
uld
have thought of connecting together!’
‘Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too,
but a little while ago.’
The smile passed from his face, and he became
graver than before. He crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I h=
ad
seen to that) and resumed his seat before me.
‘Guardian,’ said I, ‘do you
remensher, when we were overtaken by the thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's spea=
king
to you of her sister?’
‘Of course. Of course I do.’
‘And reminding you that she and her sist=
er
had differed, had gone their several ways?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why did they separate, guardian?’=
His face quite altered as he looked at me. =
216;My
child, what questions are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever d=
id
know, I believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and
proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen her sist=
er,
you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty as she.’
‘Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and =
many
a time!’
‘Seen her?’
He paused a little, biting his lip. ‘The=
n,
Esther, when you spoke to me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that=
he
was all but married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, a=
nd
that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you know it all,
and know who the lady was?’
‘No, guardian,’ I returned, fearfu=
l of
the light that dimly broke upon me. ‘Nor do I know yet.’
‘Lady Dedlock's sister.’
‘And why,’ I could scarcely ask hi=
m, ‘why,
guardian, pray tell me why were THEY parted?’
‘It was her act, and she kept its motive=
s in
her inflexible heart. He afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conject=
ure)
that some injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quar=
rel
with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him that f=
rom
the date of that letter she died to him--as in literal truth she did--and t=
hat
the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud temper and
his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too. In considerat=
ion
for those master points in him, and even in consideration for them in herse=
lf,
she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She d=
id
both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from that hour.
Nor did any one.’
‘Oh, guardian, what have I done!’ I
cried, giving way to my grief; ‘what sorrow have I innocently caused!=
’
‘You caused, Esther?’
‘Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most sur=
ely.
That secluded sister is my first remembrance.’
‘No, no!’ he cried, starting.
‘Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my
mother!’
I would have told him all my mother's letter, =
but
he would not hear it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he pu=
t so
plainly before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my bett=
er
state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude towards
him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him so dearly, never
thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that night. And when he had take=
n me
to my room and kissed me at the door, and when at last I lay down to sleep,=
my
thought was how could I ever be busy enough, how could I ever be good enoug=
h,
how in my little way could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself,
devoted enough to him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I bless=
ed
and honoured him.
My guardian called me into his room next morni=
ng,
and then I told him what had been left untold on the previous night. There =
was
nothing to be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another su=
ch
encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely shared
it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr Skimpole from improving his
opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it was not now possible
for him to advise or help. He wished it were, but no such thing could be. If
her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well- founded, which=
he
scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by s=
ight
and by reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever
happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and kindne=
ss,
I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.
‘Nor do I understand,’ said he, =
8216;that
any doubts tend towards you, my dear. Much suspicion may exist without that
connexion.’
‘With the lawyer,’ I returned. =
216;But
two other persons have come into my mind since I have been anxious.’ =
Then
I told him all about Mr Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmis=
es
when I little understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last
interview I expressed perfect confidence.
‘Well,’ said my guardian. ‘T=
hen
we may dismiss him for the present. Who is the other?’
I called to his recollection the French maid a=
nd
the eager offer of herself she had made to me.
‘Ha!’ he returned thoughtfully. =
8216;That
is a more alarming person than the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but
seeking for a new service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, =
and
it was natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed hers=
elf
for your maid, you know. She did nothing more.’
‘Her manner was strange,’ said I.<= o:p>
‘Yes, and her manner was strange when she
took her shoes off and showed that cool relish for a walk that might have e=
nded
in her death-bed,’ said my guardian. ‘It would be useless
self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There
are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous
meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing better
than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were before you had =
it.
It is the best you can do for everybody's sake. I, sharing the secret with
you--’
‘And lightening it, guardian, so much,=
8217;
said I.
‘--will be attentive to what passes in t=
hat
family, so far as I can observe it from my distance. And if the time should
come when I can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom =
it
is better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear
daughter's sake.’
I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I
ever do but thank him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay=
a
moment. Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again;
and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and far-off
possibility that I understood it.
‘My dear Esther,’ said my guardian=
, ‘I
have long had something in my thoughts that I have wished to say to you.=
217;
‘Indeed?’
‘I have had some difficulty in approachi=
ng
it, and I still have. I should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so
deliberately considered. Would you object to my writing it?’
‘Dear guardian, how could I object to yo=
ur
writing anything for ME to read?’
‘Then see, my love,’ said he with =
his
cheery smile, ‘am I at this moment quite as plain and easy--do I seem=
as
open, as honest and old-fashioned--as I am at any time?’
I answered in all earnestness, ‘Quite.=
8217;
With the strictest truth, for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not
lasted a minute), and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was
restored.
‘Do I look as if I suppressed anything,
meant anything but what I said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?=
’
said he with his bright clear eyes on mine.
I answered, most assuredly he did not.
‘Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly =
rely
on what I profess, Esther?’
‘Most thoroughly,’ said I with my
whole heart.
‘My dear girl,’ returned my guardi=
an, ‘give
me your hand.’
He took it in his, holding me lightly with his
arm, and looking down into my face with the same genuine freshness and
faithfulness of manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house=
my
home in a moment--said, ‘You have wrought changes in me, little woman,
since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done me a
world of good since that time.’
‘Ah, guardian, what have you done for me
since that time!’
‘But,’ said he, ‘that is not=
to
be remembered now.’
‘It never can be forgotten.’
‘Yes, Esther,’ said he with a gent=
le
seriousness, ‘it is to be forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while.=
You
are only to remember now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you
feel quite assured of that, my dear?’
‘I can, and I do,’ I said.
‘That's much,’ he answered. ‘=
;That's
everything. But I must not take that at a word. I will not write this somet=
hing
in my thoughts until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing c=
an
change me as you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will nev=
er
write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send Charley to me
this night week--'for the letter.' But if you are not quite certain, never
send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. If you a=
re
not quite certain on that one point, never send!’
‘Guardian,’ said I, ‘I am
already certain, I can no more be changed in that conviction than you can be
changed towards me. I shall send Charley for the letter.’
He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any
more said in reference to this conversation, either by him or me, through t=
he
whole week. When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I w=
as
alone, ‘Go and knock at Mr Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you have
come from me--'for the letter.'‘ Charley went up the stairs, and down=
the
stairs, and along the passages--the zig- zag way about the old-fashioned ho=
use
seemed very long in my listening ears that night--and so came back, along t=
he
passages, and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter. &=
#8216;Lay
it on the table, Charley,’ said I. So Charley laid it on the table and
went to bed, and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many
things.
I began with my overshadowed childhood, and pa=
ssed
through those timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her
resolute face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs Rachael
than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I passed to
the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in all around me, a=
nd
to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw my dear girl and was
received into that sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my
life. I recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of t=
hose
very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright night, and which =
had
never paled. I lived my happy life there over again, I went through my illn=
ess
and recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so
unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central figur=
e,
represented before me by the letter on the table.
I opened it and read it. It was so impressive =
in
its love for me, and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the considera=
tion
it showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read
much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it down. I =
had
thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It asked me, would I=
be
the mistress of Bleak House.
It was not a love letter, though it expressed =
so
much love, but was written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I
saw his face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind
protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places were reve=
rsed,
as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the feelings they had awaken=
ed
his. It dwelt on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his havi=
ng
attained a ripe age, while I was a child; on his writing to me with a silve=
red
head, and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature
deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage and l=
ose
nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in
which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be
right. But he had considered this step anew since our late confidence and h=
ad
decided on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor instance
that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of=
my
childhood. I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, b=
ut
of that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him nothi=
ng
and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often thought of our
future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might c=
ome
soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present
mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this
proposal. Thus he made it. If I felt that I could ever give him the best ri=
ght
he could have to be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and ju=
stly
become the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter
chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind myself
irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even then I must ha=
ve
ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in the opposite case, let =
him
be unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by whi=
ch I
called him. And as to his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she wo=
uld
ever be the same, he knew.
This was the substance of the letter, written
throughout with a justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible
guardian impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in =
his
integrity he stated the full case.
But he did not hint to me that when I had been
better looking he had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had
refrained from it. That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no
attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the
discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my
disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of
such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the last.
But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upo=
n me
as the close of the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I
had but one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank hi=
m poorly,
and what had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking hi=
m?
Still I cried very much, not only in the fulln=
ess
of my heart after reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the
prospect-- for it was strange though I had expected the contents--but as if
something for which there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lo=
st
to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but I cried very much=
.
By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were=
red
and swollen, and I said, ‘Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!’=
I
am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, bu=
t I
held up my finger at it, and it stopped.
‘That is more like the composed look you
comforted me with, my dear, when you showed me such a change!’ said I,
beginning to let down my hair. ‘When you are mistress of Bleak House,=
you
are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so=
let
us begin for once and for all.’
I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably.=
I
sobbed a little still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I
was crying then.
‘And so Esther, my dear, you are happy f=
or
life. Happy with your best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the po=
wer
of doing a great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best=
of
men.’
I thought, all at once, if my guardian had mar=
ried
some one else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That wo=
uld
have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form
that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them do=
wn
in their basket again.
Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair
before the glass, how often had I considered within myself that the deep tr=
aces
of my illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I
should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest,
unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly a=
nd
cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excu=
se
for crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak
House, why should it seem strange? Other people had thought of such things,=
if
I had not. ‘Don't you remember, my plain dear,’ I asked myself,
looking at the glass, ‘what Mrs Woodcourt said before those scars were
there about your marrying--’
Perhaps the name brought them to my remembranc=
e.
The dried remains of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. =
They
had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it
would be better not to keep them now.
They were in a book, and it happened to be in =
the
next room--our sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a can=
dle
and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, I=
saw
my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to
kiss her.
It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no
reason for crying; but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and
another. Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for=
a
moment to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed, t=
he
flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own room and
burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I
found my guardian just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There b=
eing
not the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was
none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the morning, in
and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it not unlikely that he
might speak to me about the letter, but he did not say a word.
So, on the next morning, and the next, and for=
at
least a week, over which time Mr Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, e=
very
day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never did.=
I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to
write an answer. I tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I
could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought
each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he
never said a word.
At last, Mr Skimpole having departed, we three
were one afternoon going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and
going down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the
drawing-room window looking out.
He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, &=
#8216;Aye,
it's you, little woman, is it?’ and looked out again.
I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In
short, I had come down on purpose. ‘Guardian,’ I said, rather
hesitating and trembling, ‘when would you like to have the answer to =
the
letter Charley came for?’
‘When it's ready, my dear,’ he
replied.
‘I think it is ready,’ said I.
‘Is Charley to bring it?’ he asked
pleasantly.
‘No. I have brought it myself, guardian,=
’
I returned.
I put my two arms round his neck and kissed hi=
m,
and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it ma=
de
no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing t=
o my
precious pet about it.
One morning when I had done jingling about wit=
h my
baskets of keys, as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden=
I
happened to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going=
in
which looked like Mr Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that morning of h=
er
hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the Chancery suit by being so
very earnest in it; and therefore, not to damp my dear girl's spirits, I sa=
id
nothing about Mr Vholes's shadow.
Presently came Charley, lightly winding among =
the
bushes and tripping along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's
attendants instead of my maid, saying, ‘Oh, if you please, miss, would
you step and speak to Mr Jarndyce!’
It was one of Charley's peculiarities that
whenever she was charged with a message she always began to deliver it as s=
oon
as she beheld, at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Theref=
ore
I saw Charley asking me in her usual form of words to ‘step and speak=
’
to Mr Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she had sa=
id
it so often that she was out of breath.
I told Ada I would make haste back and inquire=
d of
Charley as we went in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr Jarndyce. To
which Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit t=
o my
educational powers, replied, ‘Yes, miss. Him as come down in the coun=
try
with Mr Richard.’
A more complete contrast than my guardian and =
Mr
Vholes I suppose there could not be. I found them looking at one another ac=
ross
a table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and uprig=
ht
and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what he had to say=
in such
a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it in in such a cold-blooded,
gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I never had seen two people so
unmatched.
‘You know Mr Vholes, my dear,’ sai=
d my
guardian. Not with the greatest urbanity, I must say.
Mr Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usua=
l,
and seated himself again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in t=
he
gig. Not having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
‘Mr Vholes,’ said my guardian, eye=
ing
his black figure as if he were a bird of ill omen, ‘has brought an ug=
ly
report of our most unfortunate Rick.’ Laying a marked emphasis on =
216;most
unfortunate’ as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion
with Mr Vholes.
I sat down between them; Mr Vholes remained
immovable, except that he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his
yellow face with his black glove.
‘And as Rick and you are happily good
friends, I should like to know,’ said my guardian, ‘what you th=
ink,
my dear. Would you be so good as to--as to speak up, Mr Vholes?’
Doing anything but that, Mr Vholes observed, &=
#8216;I
have been saying that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr C.'s
professional adviser, that Mr C.'s circumstances are at the present moment =
in
an embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the peculi=
ar
and pressing nature of liabilities Mr C. has incurred and the means he has =
of
liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved off many little matters for =
Mr
C., but there is a limit to staving off, and we have reached it. I have made
some advances out of pocket to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I
necessarily look to being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capit=
al,
and I have a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to
realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My apprehens=
ion
is, Mr C.'s circumstances being such, lest it should end in his obtaining l=
eave
to part with his commission, which at all events is desirable to be made kn=
own
to his connexions.’
Mr Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking,
here emerged into the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so
stifled was his tone, and looked before him again.
‘Imagine the poor fellow without even his
present resource,’ said my guardian to me. ‘Yet what can I do? =
You
know him, Esther. He would never accept of help from me now. To offer it or
hint at it would be to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did.̵=
7;
Mr Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
‘What Mr Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no d=
oubt
the case, and is the difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done, =
I do
not say that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here u=
nder
the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything may be openly
carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not
openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on. I
desire to leave a good name behind me. If I consulted merely my own interes=
ts
with Mr C., I should not be here. So insurmountable, as you must well know,
would be his objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he
charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of society a=
nd a
father--
It appeared to us that Mr Vholes said neither =
more
nor less than the truth in intimating that he sought to divide the
responsibility, such as it was, of knowing Richard's situation. I could only
suggest that I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and
see him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without consulting=
Mr
Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to propose it, while Mr Vhol=
es
gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed his funeral gloves.
The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate
objection on my guardian's part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was
only too happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr
Vholes.
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr Jarndyce, =
216;Miss
Summerson will communicate with Mr Carstone, and you can only hope that his
position may be yet retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after
your journey, sir.’
‘I thank you, Mr Jarndyce,’ said Mr
Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell,=
‘not
any. I thank you, no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am=
but
a poor knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this
period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be. Everything
having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your permission take my
leave.’
‘And I would that you could take your le=
ave,
and we could all take our leave, Mr Vholes,’ returned my guardian
bitterly, ‘of a cause you know of.’
Mr Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from he=
ad
to foot that it had quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleas=
ant
perfume, made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and
slowly shook it.
‘We whose ambition it is to be looked up=
on
in the light of respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to
the wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think wel=
l of
my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an obligation no=
t to
refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr C.?’
I said I would be careful not to do it.
‘Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr Jarndyc=
e,
good morning, sir.’ Mr Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seem=
ed
to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, a=
nd
took his long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach,
passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the se=
ed
in the ground as it glided along.
Of course it became necessary to tell Ada wher=
e I
was going and why I was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed.
But she was too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words=
of
excuse, and in a more loving spirit still--my dear devoted girl!--she wrote=
him
a long letter, of which I took charge.
Charley was to be my travelling companion, tho=
ugh
I am sure I wanted none and would willingly have left her at home. We all w=
ent
to London that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them.=
At
our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the Kentish
letters.
It was a night's journey in those coach times,=
but
we had the mail to ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It pa=
ssed
with me as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At=
one
while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I thought I
should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever have supposed so. =
Now
it seemed one of the most reasonable things in the world that I should have
come, and now one of the most unreasonable. In what state I should find Ric=
hard,
what I should say to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by t=
urns
with these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune (to
which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and over again all
night.
At last we came into the narrow streets of Dea=
l,
and very gloomy they were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, wi=
th
its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, =
and
great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and
loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an
appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white
fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early ropemakers, who, with the =
yarn
twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of
existence, they were spinning themselves into cordage.
But when we got into a warm room in an excelle=
nt
hotel and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (=
for
it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful.
Our little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very mu=
ch.
Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships that we had=
had
no idea were near appeared. I don't know how many sail the waiter told us w=
ere
then lying in the downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size--one was a
large Indiaman just come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds,
making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships brighten=
ed,
and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shor=
e to
them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in themselves
and everything around them, was most beautiful.
The large Indiaman was our great attraction
because she had come into the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boa=
ts,
and we said how glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Cha=
rley
was curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the
serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much faster =
than
grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told her, too, how peopl=
e in
such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were save=
d by
the intrepidity and humanity of one man. And Charley asking how that could =
be,
I told her how we knew at home of such a case.
I had thought of sending Richard a note saying=
I
was there, but it seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. A=
s he
lived in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we
went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard, we fou=
nd
everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I asked a sergeant
standing on the guardhouse- steps where he lived. He sent a man before to s=
how
me, who went up some bare stairs, and knocked with his knuckles at a door, =
and
left us.
‘Now then!’ cried Richard from wit=
hin.
So I left Charley in the little passage, and going on to the half-open door,
said, ‘Can I come in, Richard? It's only Dame Durden.’
He was writing at a table, with a great confus=
ion
of clothes, tin cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all a=
bout
the floor. He was only half dressed--in plain clothes, I observed, not in
uniform--and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his room. All
this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was seated near him, for=
he
started upon hearing my voice and caught me in his arms in a moment. Dear
Richard! He was ever the same to me. Down to--ah, poor poor fellow!--to the
end, he never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner=
.
‘Good heaven, my dear little woman,̵=
7;
said he, ‘how do you come here? Who could have thought of seeing you!
Nothing the matter? Ada is well?’
‘Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard=
!’
‘Ah!’ he said, leaning back in his
chair. ‘My poor cousin! I was writing to you, Esther.’
So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the
fullness of his handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the
closely written sheet of paper in his hand!
‘Have you been at the trouble of writing=
all
that, and am I not to read it after all?’ I asked.
‘Oh, my dear,’ he returned with a
hopeless gesture. ‘You may read it in the whole room. It is all over
here.’
I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I
told him that I had heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come=
to
consult with him what could best be done.
‘Like you, Esther, but useless, and so N=
OT
like you!’ said he with a melancholy smile. ‘I am away on leave=
this
day--should have been gone in another hour--and that is to smooth it over, =
for
my selling out. Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the r=
est.
I only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all the
professions.’
‘Richard,’ I urged, ‘it is n=
ot
so hopeless as that?’
‘Esther,’ he returned, ‘it is
indeed. I am just so near disgrace as that those who are put in authority o=
ver
me (as the catechism goes) would far rather be without me than with me. And
they are right. Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not =
fit
even for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but f=
or
one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now,’ he said, tearing t=
he
letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting them away, by
driblets, ‘how could I have gone abroad? I must have been ordered abr=
oad,
but how could I have gone? How could I, with my experience of that thing, t=
rust
even Vholes unless I was at his back!’
I suppose he knew by my face what I was about =
to
say, but he caught the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips
with it to prevent me from going on.
‘No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I
forbid--must forbid. The first is John Jarndyce. The second, you know what.
Call it madness, and I tell you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But=
it
is no such thing; it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever
was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom=
to
abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I have bestowed upon=
it!
Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I
never will.’
He was in that mood in which I thought it best=
not
to increase his determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing h=
im.
I took out Ada's letter and put it in his hand.
‘Am I to read it now?’ he asked.
As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and
resting his head upon his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested h=
is
head upon his two hands--to hide his face from me. In a little while he ros=
e as
if the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it there,
with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had folded it up, s=
tood
there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. When he came back to his
chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
‘Of course, Esther, you know what she sa=
ys
here?’ He spoke in a softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked=
me.
‘Yes, Richard.’
‘Offers me,’ he went on, tapping h=
is
foot upon the floor, ‘the little inheritance she is certain of so
soon--just as little and as much as I have wasted--and begs and prays me to
take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service.’
‘I know your welfare to be the dearest w=
ish
of her heart,’ said I. ‘And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada's is a no=
ble
heart.’
‘I am sure it is. I--I wish I was dead!&=
#8217;
He went back to the window, and laying his arm
across it, leaned his head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see h=
im
so, but I hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My ex=
perience
was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of =
this
emotion to a new sense of injury.
‘And this is the heart that the same John
Jarndyce, who is not otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to
estrange from me,’ said he indignantly. ‘And the dear girl make=
s me
this generous offer from under the same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the =
same
John Jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new means=
of
buying me off.’
‘Richard!’ I cried out, rising has=
tily.
‘I will not hear you say such shameful words!’ I was very angry
with him indeed, for the first time in my life, but it only lasted a moment.
When I saw his worn young face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my =
hand
on his shoulder and said, ‘If you please, my dear Richard, do not spe=
ak
in such a tone to me. Consider!’
He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in t=
he
most generous manner that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pard=
on a
thousand times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rat=
her
fluttered after being so fiery.
‘To accept this offer, my dear Esther,=
8217;
said he, sitting down beside me and resuming our conversation, ‘--once
more, pray, pray forgive me; I am deeply grieved--to accept my dearest cous=
in's
offer is, I need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers th=
at I
could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have done wi=
th
the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in the midst of my
troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing Ada's interests in
pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the wheel, and he cannot help
urging it on as much for her as for me, thank God!’
His sanguine hopes were rising within him and
lighting up his features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had
been before.
‘No, no!’ cried Richard exultingly=
. ‘If
every farthing of Ada's little fortune were mine, no part of it should be s=
pent
in retaining me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am w=
eary
of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should be us=
ed
where she has a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall now have only=
one
thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I shall not be without mea=
ns.
Free of my commission, I shall be able to compound with some small usurers =
who
will hear of nothing but their bond now--Vholes says so. I should have a
balance in my favour anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall
carry a letter to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hop=
eful
of me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear.’
I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I kn=
ow
it was tiresome, and nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all w=
ise.
It only came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw =
that
on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless to make any
representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in this very intervie=
w,
the sense of my guardian's remark that it was even more mischievous to use
persuasion with him than to leave him as he was.
Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richa=
rd
if he would mind convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had
said, and that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitat=
ion
a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was arranged. I
found, from what he told me, that Mr Vholes had copies of these papers and =
had
been in consultation with him throughout. Beyond ascertaining this, and hav=
ing
been the bearer of Ada's letter, and being (as I was going to be) Richard's
companion back to London, I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this=
to
myself with a reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait
until he joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me=
to
the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.
There was a concourse of people in one spot,
surrounding some naval officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing
about them with unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the
great Indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look.
The gentlemen came slowly up from the watersid=
e,
speaking good- humouredly to each other and to the people around and glanci=
ng
about them as if they were glad to be in England again. ‘Charley,
Charley,’ said I, ‘come away!’ And I hurried on so swiftly
that my little maid was surprised.
It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-=
room
and I had had time to take breath that I began to think why I had made such=
haste.
In one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr Allan Woodcourt, and I had
been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he should see =
my
altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed
me.
But I knew this would not do, and I now said to
myself, ‘My dear, there is no reason--there is and there can be no re=
ason
at all--why it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you =
were
last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This is not
your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!’ I was in a great
tremble--with running--and at first was quite unable to calm myself; but I =
got
better, and I was very glad to know it.
The party came to the hotel. I heard them spea=
king
on the staircase. I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their
voices again--I mean I knew Mr Woodcourt's. It would still have been a great
relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but I was
determined not to do so. ‘No, my dear, no. No, no, no!’
I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up--I
think I mean half down, but it matters very little--and wrote on one of my
cards that I happened to be there with Mr Richard Carstone, and I sent it i=
n to
Mr Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be by chance
among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw that he was very
sorry for me.
‘You have been in shipwreck and peril si=
nce
you left us, Mr Woodcourt,’ said I, ‘but we can hardly call tha=
t a
misfortune which enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it wi=
th
the truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old patient,
poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe illness.’
‘Ah! Little Miss Flite!’ he said. =
‘She
lives the same life yet?’
‘Just the same.’
I was so comfortable with myself now as not to
mind the veil and to be able to put it aside.
‘Her gratitude to you, Mr Woodcourt, is
delightful. She is a most affectionate creature, as I have reason to say.=
8217;
‘You--you have found her so?’ he
returned. ‘I--I am glad of that.’ He was so very sorry for me t=
hat
he could scarcely speak.
‘I assure you,’ said I, ‘tha=
t I
was deeply touched by her sympathy and pleasure at the time I have referred=
to.’
‘I was grieved to hear that you had been=
very
ill.’
‘I was very ill.’
‘But you have quite recovered?’
‘I have quite recovered my health and my
cheerfulness,’ said I. ‘You know how good my guardian is and wh=
at a
happy life we lead, and I have everything to be thankful for and nothing in=
the
world to desire.’
I felt as if he had greater commiseration for =
me
than I had ever had for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new
calmness to find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring hi=
m. I
spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his
probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He had not found
himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He had gone out a poor sh=
ip's
surgeon and had come home nothing better. While we were talking, and when I=
was
glad to believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock =
he
had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with=
me,
and they met with cordial pleasure.
I saw that after their first greetings were ov=
er,
and when they spoke of Richard's career, Mr Woodcourt had a perception that=
all
was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there =
were
something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked towards me=
as
though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard
was in one of his sanguine states and in good spirits and was thoroughly
pleased to see Mr Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.
Richard proposed that we all should go to Lond=
on
together; but Mr Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, c=
ould
not join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so much
more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to think I had =
been
able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not relieved of Richard. When =
the
coach was almost ready and Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he s=
poke
to me about him.
I was not sure that I had a right to lay his w=
hole
story open, but I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarnd=
yce
and to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr Woodcourt
listened with interest and expressed his regret.
‘I saw you observe him rather closely,=
8217;
said I, ‘Do you think him so changed?’
‘He is changed,’ he returned, shak=
ing
his head.
I felt the blood rush into my face for the fir=
st
time, but it was only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and=
it
was gone.
‘It is not,’ said Mr Woodcourt, =
8216;his
being so much younger or older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, =
as
there being upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so remark=
able
a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all
weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.’
‘You do not think he is ill?’ said=
I.
No. He looked robust in body.
‘That he cannot be at peace in mind, we =
have
too much reason to know,’ I proceeded. ‘Mr Woodcourt, you are g=
oing
to London?’
‘To-morrow or the next day.’
‘There is nothing Richard wants so much =
as a
friend. He always liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him
sometimes with your companionship if you can. You do not know of what servi=
ce
it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr Jarndyce, and even I--how we
should all thank you, Mr Woodcourt!’
‘Miss Summerson,’ he said, more mo= ved than he had been from the first, ‘before heaven, I will be a true fri= end to him! I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!’<= o:p>
‘God bless you!’ said I, with my e=
yes
filling fast; but I thought they might, when it was not for myself. ‘=
Ada
loves him--we all love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her
what you say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!’
Richard came back as we finished exchanging th=
ese
hurried words and gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
‘Woodcourt,’ he said, unconscious =
with
what application, ‘pray let us meet in London!’
‘Meet?’ returned the other. ‘=
;I
have scarcely a friend there now but you. Where shall I find you?’
‘Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,=
’
said Richard, pondering. ‘Say at Vholes's, Symond's Inn.’
‘Good! Without loss of time.’
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in
the coach and Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr Woodcourt laid his
friendly hand on Richard's shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and
waved mine in thanks.
And in his last look as we drove away, I saw t=
hat
he was very sorry for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as t=
he
dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly
remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone's. Dilating =
and
dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until=
it
fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights
burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, in =
the
nauseous air, and winking--as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's--at =
many
horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull
cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region
unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is
gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alon=
e's,
and Tom is fast asleep.
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both=
in
and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constable=
s,
or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct
principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church;
whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the
crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking inst=
ead.
In the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear=
, to
wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to
somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom g=
oes
to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his
messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a d=
rop
of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. =
It
shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on
analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace
shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom=
of
Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not
one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness,=
not
a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every
order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the
high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his
revenge.
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be
uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen o=
f it
the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imaginatio=
n is
at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day beg=
ins
to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even t=
hat
the sun should sometimes set upon the British dominions than that it should=
ever
rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom.
A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some
inaptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours =
on a
restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curios=
ity,
he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable by-ways. Nor=
is
he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate intere=
st;
and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness an=
d to
have studied it before.
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud wh=
ich
is the main street of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy
houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except =
in
one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a
door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journey=
ed a
long distance and is footsore and travel- stained. She sits on the door-ste=
p in
the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head u=
pon
her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is do=
zing
probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan
Woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pa=
ss
her. Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Can't you make them hear? Do you want t=
o be
let in?’
‘I'm waiting till they get up at another
house--a lodging-house-- not here,’ the woman patiently returns. R=
16;I'm
waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me.’
‘I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to
see you sitting in the street.’
‘Thank you, sir. It don't matter.’=
A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of
avoiding patronage or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite
device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
‘Let me look at your forehead,’ he
says, bending down. ‘I am a doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt =
you
for the world.’
He knows that by touching her with his skilful=
and
accustomed hand he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight
objection, saying, ‘It's nothing’; but he has scarcely laid his
fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
‘Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly
broken. This must be very sore.’
‘It do ache a little, sir,’ returns
the woman with a started tear upon her cheek.
‘Let me try to make it more comfortable.=
My
handkerchief won't hurt you.’
‘Oh, dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!R=
17;
He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and
having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his han=
d,
takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is
thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the
street, ‘And so your husband is a brickmaker?’
‘How do you know that, sir?’ asks =
the
woman, astonished.
‘Why, I suppose so from the colour of the
clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about worki=
ng
at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them c=
ruel
to their wives too.’
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she
would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the ha=
nd
upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
them again.
‘Where is he now?’ asks the surgeo=
n.
‘He got into trouble last night, sir; but
he'll look for me at the lodging-house.’
‘He will get into worse trouble if he of=
ten
misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive
him, brutal as he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deser=
ved
it. You have no young child?’
The woman shakes her head. ‘One as I cal=
ls
mine, sir, but it's Liz's.’
‘Your own is dead. I see! Poor little th=
ing!’
By this time he has finished and is putting up=
his
case. ‘I suppose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?R=
17;
he asks, good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and
curtsys.
‘It's a good two or three and twenty mile
from here, sir. At Saint Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you =
gave
a start like, as if you did.’
‘Yes, I know something of it. And now I =
will
ask you a question in return. Have you money for your lodging?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she says, ‘really
and truly.’ And she shows it. He tells her, in acknowledgment of her =
many
subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks awa=
y.
Tom-all- Alone's is still asleep, and nothing is astir.
Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to t=
he
point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he
sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the
soiled walls--which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid--and furtive=
ly
thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth whose face is hollow
and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along un=
seen
that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him=
to
look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the oth=
er
side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand
before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for wh=
at
purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They look, in
colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that
rotted long ago.
Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and n=
ote
all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot
recall how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a
form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, sti=
ll,
cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance.
He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's =
in
the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him,
and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, follow=
ed
by the woman.
‘Stop him, stop him!’ cries the wo=
man,
almost breathless. ‘Stop him, sir!’
He darts across the road into the boy's path, =
but
the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, co=
mes
up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman
follows, crying, ‘Stop him, sir, pray stop him!’ Allan, not kno=
wing
but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and runs so =
hard
that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time he repeats the curve,
the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him on any of these
occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve =
to
do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugiti=
ve,
hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfa=
re.
Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbl=
es
down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the w=
oman
comes up.
‘Oh, you, Jo!’ cries the woman. =
8216;What?
I have found you at last!’
‘Jo,’ repeats Allan, looking at him
with attention, ‘Jo! Stay. To be sure! I recollect this lad some time=
ago
being brought before the coroner.’
‘Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhi=
ch,’
whimpers Jo. ‘What of that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as =
me
alone? An't I unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fu=
r to
be? I've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by anoth=
er
on you, till I'm worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich warn't MY fault=
. I
done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one I knowed =
to
speak to, as ever come across my crossing. It ain't wery likely I should wa=
nt
him to be inkwhiched. I only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go
and make a hole in the water, I'm sure I don't.’
He says it with such a pitiable air, and his g=
rimy
tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so =
like
a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect=
and
impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woma=
n, ‘Miserable
creature, what has he done?’
To which she only replies, shaking her head at=
the
prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily, ‘Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I h=
ave
found you at last!’
‘What has he done?’ says Allan. =
8216;Has
he robbed you?’
‘No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing =
but
what was kind-hearted by me, and that's the wonder of it.’
Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the
woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle.
‘But he was along with me, sir,’ s=
ays
the woman. ‘Oh, you Jo! He was along with me, sir, down at Saint Alba=
ns,
ill, and a young lady, Lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on=
him
when I durstn't, and took him home--’
Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horr=
or.
‘Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made =
him
comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never
has been seen or heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that y=
oung
lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful loo=
ks,
and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it wasn't for h=
er
angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You
ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her
goodness to you?’ demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she
recalls it and breaking into passionate tears.
The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hear=
s,
falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at=
the
ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against w=
hich
he leans rattles.
Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet
gesture, but effectually.
‘Richard told me--’ He falters. =
8216;I
mean, I have heard of this-- don't mind me for a moment, I will speak prese=
ntly.’
He turns away and stands for a while looking o=
ut
at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure,
except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very
remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention.
‘You hear what she says. But get up, get=
up!’
Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and
stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the
hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing=
his
right hand over his left and his left foot over his right.
‘You hear what she says, and I know it's
true. Have you been here ever since?’
‘Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's =
till
this blessed morning,’ replies Jo hoarsely.
‘Why have you come here now?’
Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at
his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers, ‘I don't
know how to do nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery poor and il=
l,
and I thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay do=
wn
and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a tr=
ifle
of Mr Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though =
Mrs
Snagsby she was allus a- chivying on me--like everybody everywheres.’=
‘Where have you come from?’
Jo looks all round the court again, looks at h=
is
questioner's knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the
hoarding in a sort of resignation.
‘Did you hear me ask you where you have =
come
from?’
‘Tramp then,’ says Jo.
‘Now tell me,’ proceeds Allan, mak=
ing
a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and lea=
ning
over him with an expression of confidence, ‘tell me how it came about
that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate a=
s to
pity you and take you home.’
Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and
excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the you=
ng
lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, tha=
t he
would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his unfortne=
t ed
chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, s=
he
wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant
it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.
Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. =
He
constrains himself to touch him. ‘Come, Jo. Tell me.’
‘No. I dustn't,’ says Jo, relapsing
into the profile state. ‘I dustn't, or I would.’
‘But I must know,’ returns the oth=
er, ‘all
the same. Come, Jo.’
After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts =
up
his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, ̵=
6;Well,
I'll tell you something. I was took away. There!’
‘Took away? In the night?’
‘Ah!’ Very apprehensive of being
overheard, Jo looks about him and even glances up some ten feet at the top =
of
the hoarding and through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust
should be looking over or hidden on the other side.
‘Who took you away?’
‘I dustn't name him,’ says Jo. =
216;I
dustn't do it, sir.’
‘But I want, in the young lady's name, to
know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.’
‘Ah, but I don't know,’ replies Jo,
shaking his head fearfully, ‘as he DON'T hear.’
‘Why, he is not in this place.’
‘Oh, ain't he though?’ says Jo. =
8216;He's
in all manner of places, all at wanst.’
Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers
some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He
patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience t=
han
by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
‘Aye!’ says Allan. ‘Why, what
had you been doing?’
‘Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get
myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I'm
a-moving on now. I'm a-moving on to the berryin ground--that's the move as =
I'm
up to.’
‘No, no, we will try to prevent that. But
what did he do with you?’
‘Put me in a horsepittle,’ replied=
Jo,
whispering, ‘till I was discharged, then giv me a little money--four
half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns--and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you
here,' he ses. 'You hook it. You go and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he s=
es.
'Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you'll
repent it.' So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see me if I'm abo=
ve
ground,’ concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions=
and
investigations.
Allan considers a little, then remarks, turnin=
g to
the woman but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, ‘He is not so ungrate=
ful
as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insuffici=
ent
one.’
‘Thankee, sir, thankee!’ exclaims =
Jo. ‘There
now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the
genlmn ses, and it's all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows
it.’
‘Now, Jo,’ says Allan, keeping his=
eye
upon him, ‘come with me and I will find you a better place than this =
to
lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other to av=
oid
observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a prom=
ise.’
‘I won't, not unless I wos to see HIM
a-coming, sir.’
‘Very well. I take your word. Half the t=
own
is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in anoth=
er
hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman.’
‘Good day again, sir, and I thank you ki=
ndly
many times again.’
She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attent=
ive,
and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, ‘Ony you tell the young
lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!’ nods and
shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries=
, a
farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, cl=
ose
to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two co=
me
up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer
air.
As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the
streets where the high church spires and the distances are so near and clea=
r in
the morning light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolve=
s in
his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. ‘It surely is a
strange fact,’ he considers, ‘that in the heart of a civilized
world this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of th=
an
an unowned dog.’ But it is none the less a fact because of its
strangeness, and the difficulty remains.
At first he looks behind him often to assure
himself that Jo is still really following. But look where he will, he still
beholds him close to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand
from brick to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along,
glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing in his
thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering with a less di=
vided
attention what he shall do.
A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests =
the
first thing to be done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo cro=
sses
and comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his rig=
ht
hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading dirt with a
natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before
him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw the bread and butter, loo=
king
anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, like a scared
animal.
But he is so sick and miserable that even hung=
er
has abandoned him. ‘I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir,’ says=
Jo,
soon putting down his food, ‘but I don't know nothink--not even that.=
I
don't care for eating wittles nor yet for drinking on 'em.’ And Jo st=
ands
shivering and looking at the breakfast wonderingly.
Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse a=
nd
on his chest. ‘Draw breath, Jo!’ ‘It draws,’ says J=
o, ‘as
heavy as a cart.’ He might add, ‘And rattles like it,’ bu=
t he
only mutters, ‘I'm a- moving on, sir.’
Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. Th=
ere
is none at hand, but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little
measure of wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins=
to
revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. ‘We may repeat that dose,
Jo,’ observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face. ̵=
6;So!
Now we will take five minutes' rest, and then go on again.’
Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the
breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt pac=
es
up and down in the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him
without appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that=
he
is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his face brighte=
ns
somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice of bread he had so
hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of improvement, Allan engages
him in conversation and elicits to his no small wonder the adventure of the
lady in the veil, with all its consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly
tells it. When he has finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a
temporary place of refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Mi=
ss
Flite, Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered.=
But
all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer lodges ther=
e;
it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much obscured by dust, whose age=
is
a problem, but who is indeed no other than the interesting Judy, is tart and
spare in her replies. These sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that =
Miss
Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repa=
irs
to that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she may =
be
punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend the Chancello=
r)
comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and with open arms.
‘My dear physician!’ cries Miss Fl=
ite.
‘My meritorious, distinguished, honourable officer!’ She uses s=
ome
odd expressions, but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can
be--more so than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she=
has
no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a doorway, and
tells her how he comes there.
‘Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the
present? Now, you have a fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me=
.’
Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, se=
ts
herself to consider; but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. =
Mrs
Blinder is entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley's room. R=
16;Gridley!’
exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth repetition of this
remark. ‘Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear physician! General
George will help us out.’
It is hopeless to ask for any information about
General George, and would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstair=
s to
put on her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with=
her
reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her disjointed
manner on coming down in full array that General George, whom she often cal=
ls
upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a great interest in all connec=
ted
with her, Allan is induced to think that they may be in the right way. So he
tells Jo, for his encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over =
now;
and they repair to the general's. Fortunately it is not far.
From the exterior of George's Shooting Gallery,
and the long entry, and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt aug=
urs
well. He also descries promise in the figure of Mr George himself, striding
towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no stock o=
n,
and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and dumbbell, weightily
asserting themselves through his light shirt-sleeves.
‘Your servant, sir,’ says Mr George
with a military salute. Good- humouredly smiling all over his broad forehea=
d up
into his crisp hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateline=
ss,
and at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He w=
inds
it up with another ‘Your servant, sir!’ and another salute.
‘Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?=
217;
says Mr George.
‘I am proud to find I have the air of on=
e,’
returns Allan; ‘but I am only a sea-going doctor.’
‘Indeed, sir! I should have thought you =
was
a regular blue-jacket myself.’
Allan hopes Mr George will forgive his intrusi=
on
the more readily on that account, and particularly that he will not lay asi=
de
his pipe, which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doin=
g. ‘You
are very good, sir,’ returns the trooper. ‘As I know by experie=
nce
that it's not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it's equally agreeable =
to
yourself--’ and finishes the sentence by putting it between his lips
again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows about Jo, unto which the tro=
oper
listens with a grave face.
‘And that's the lad, sir, is it?’ =
he
inquires, looking along the entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great
letters on the whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
‘That's he,’ says Allan. ‘An=
d, Mr
George, I am in this difficulty about him. I am unwilling to place him in a
hospital, even if I could procure him immediate admission, because I foresee
that he would not stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there.
The same objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to =
be
evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to get h=
im into
one, which is a system that I don't take kindly to.’
‘No man does, sir,’ returns Mr Geo=
rge.
‘I am convinced that he would not remain=
in
either place, because he is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this pe=
rson
who ordered him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this
person to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.’
‘I ask your pardon, sir,’ says Mr
George. ‘But you have not mentioned that party's name. Is it a secret,
sir?’
‘The boy makes it one. But his name is
Bucket.’
‘Bucket the detective, sir?’
‘The same man.’
‘The man is known to me, sir,’ ret=
urns
the trooper after blowing out a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, R=
16;and
the boy is so far correct that he undoubtedly is a--rum customer.’ Mr
George smokes with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in
silence.
‘Now, I wish Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summer=
son
at least to know that this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared,
and to have it in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do=
so.
Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor lodging =
kept
by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent people and Jo, Mr Georg=
e,’
says Allan, following the direction of the trooper's eyes along the entry, =
‘have
not been much acquainted, as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to
know any one in this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my
paying for him beforehand?’
As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a
dirty-faced little man standing at the trooper's elbow and looking up, with=
an
oddly twisted figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. After a few =
more
puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the
little man winks up at the trooper.
‘Well, sir,’ says Mr George, ̵=
6;I can
assure you that I would willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it
would be at all agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a
privilege to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturall=
y in
the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the place is.
You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the same would meet =
your
views. No charge made, except for rations. We are not in a flourishing stat=
e of
circumstances here, sir. We are liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a
moment's notice. However, sir, such as the place is, and so long as it last=
s,
here it is at your service.’
With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr Geor=
ge
places the whole building at his visitor's disposal.
‘I take it for granted, sir,’ he a=
dds,
‘you being one of the medical staff, that there is no present infecti=
on
about this unfortunate subject?’
Allan is quite sure of it.
‘Because, sir,’ says Mr George,
shaking his head sorrowfully, ‘we have had enough of that.’
His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his =
new
acquaintance. ‘Still I am bound to tell you,’ observes Allan af=
ter
repeating his former assurance, ‘that the boy is deplorably low and
reduced and that he may be--I do not say that he is--too far gone to recove=
r.’
‘Do you consider him in present danger, =
sir?’
inquires the trooper.
‘Yes, I fear so.’
‘Then, sir,’ returns the trooper i=
n a
decisive manner, ‘it appears to me--being naturally in the vagabond w=
ay
myself--that the sooner he comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil!
Bring him in!’
Mr Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute
the word of command; and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. J=
o is
brought in. He is not one of Mrs Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not =
one
of Mrs Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is
not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-gro=
wn
savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to =
all
the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a
heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sor=
es
are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English
soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that peri=
sh.
Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the
crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr George's gallery and
stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems =
to
know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is
and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of=
the
same order of things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order =
and
no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity.
‘Look here, Jo!’ says Allan. ̵=
6;This
is Mr George.’
Jo searches the floor for some time longer, th=
en
looks up for a moment, and then down again.
‘He is a kind friend to you, for he is g=
oing
to give you lodging room here.’
Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is suppo=
sed
to be a bow. After a little more consideration and some backing and changin=
g of
the foot on which he rests, he mutters that he is ‘wery thankful.R=
17;
‘You are quite safe here. All you have t=
o do
at present is to be obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the tr=
uth
here, whatever you do, Jo.’
‘Wishermaydie if I don't, sir,’ sa=
ys
Jo, reverting to his favourite declaration. ‘I never done nothink yit,
but wot you knows on, to get myself into no trouble. I never was in no other
trouble at all, sir, 'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation.’
‘I believe it, now attend to Mr George. I
see he is going to speak to you.’
‘My intention merely was, sir,’
observes Mr George, amazingly broad and upright, ‘to point out to him
where he can lie down and get a thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here=
.’
As the trooper speaks, he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and
opens one of the little cabins. ‘There you are, you see! Here is a
mattress, and here you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr, I ask yo=
ur
pardon, sir’--he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given hi=
m--’Mr
Woodcourt pleases. Don't you be alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be aimed=
at
the target, and not you. Now, there's another thing I would recommend, sir,=
’
says the trooper, turning to his visitor. ‘Phil, come here!’
Phil bears down upon them according to his usu=
al
tactics. ‘Here is a man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutt=
er.
Consequently, it is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this
poor creature. You do, don't you, Phil?’
‘Certainly and surely I do, guv'ner,R=
17;
is Phil's reply.
‘Now I was thinking, sir,’ says Mr
George in a martial sort of confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in=
a council
of war at a drum-head, ‘that if this man was to take him to a bath and
was to lay out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles--&=
#8217;
‘Mr George, my considerate friend,’
returns Allan, taking out his purse, ‘it is the very favour I would h=
ave
asked.’
Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on =
this
work of improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the
best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her friend the
Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the judgment she has so long
expected in her absence, and observing ‘which you know, my dear
physician, and general, after so many years, would be too absurdly unfortun=
ate!’
Allan takes the opportunity of going out to procure some restorative medici=
nes,
and obtaining them near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up
and down the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.
‘I take it, sir,’ says Mr George, =
‘that
you know Miss Summerson pretty well?’
Yes, it appears.
‘Not related to her, sir?’
No, it appears.
‘Excuse the apparent curiosity,’ s=
ays Mr
George. ‘It seemed to me probable that you might take more than a com=
mon
interest in this poor creature because Miss Summerson had taken that
unfortunate interest in him. 'Tis MY case, sir, I assure you.’
‘And mine, Mr George.’
The trooper looks sideways at Allan's sunburnt
cheek and bright dark eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems=
to
approve of him.
‘Since you have been out, sir, I have be=
en
thinking that I unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where
Bucket took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted =
with
the name, I can help you to it. It's Tulkinghorn. That's what it is.’=
Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the
name.
‘Tulkinghorn. That's the name, sir. I kn=
ow
the man, and know him to have been in communication with Bucket before,
respecting a deceased person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir=
. To
my sorrow.’
Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is.
‘What kind of man! Do you mean to look a=
t?’
‘I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, what
kind of man?’
‘Why, then I'll tell you, sir,’
returns the trooper, stopping short and folding his arms on his square ches=
t so
angrily that his face fires and flushes all over; ‘he is a confounded=
ly
bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like fle=
sh
and blood than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man--by George!--that
has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfact=
ion
with myself than all other men put together. That's the kind of man Mr
Tulkinghorn is!’
‘I am sorry,’ says Allan, ‘to
have touched so sore a place.’
‘Sore?’ The trooper plants his legs
wider apart, wets the palm of his broad right hand, and lays it on the
imaginary moustache. ‘It's no fault of yours, sir; but you shall judg=
e.
He has got a power over me. He is the man I spoke of just now as being able=
to
tumble me out of this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-sa=
w.
He won't hold off, and he won't come on. If I have a payment to make him, or
time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don't see me, don't
hear me--passes me on to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn, Melchisedech's in
Clifford's Inn passes me back again to him--he keeps me prowling and dangli=
ng
about him as if I was made of the same stone as himself. Why, I spend half =
my
life now, pretty well, loitering and dodging about his door. What does he c=
are?
Nothing. Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He
chafes and goads me till-- Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr Woodco=
urt,’
the trooper resumes his march, ‘all I say is, he is an old man; but I=
am
glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs to my horse and riding =
at
him in a fair field. For if I had that chance, in one of the humours he dri=
ves
me into--he'd go down, sir!’
Mr George has been so excited that he finds it
necessary to wipe his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles =
his
impetuosity away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his
head and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an
occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if=
it
were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensat=
ion.
In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about the going down of Mr
Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.
Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo =
is
assisted to his mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administra=
tion
of medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and
instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He repairs to h=
is
lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without seeking rest, goes away =
to Mr
Jarndyce to communicate his discovery.
With him Mr Jarndyce returns alone, confidenti=
ally
telling him that there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed
and showing a serious interest in it. To Mr Jarndyce, Jo repeats in substan=
ce
what he said in the morning, without any material variation. Only that cart=
of
his is heavier to draw, and draws with a hollower sound.
‘Let me lay here quiet and not be chivie=
d no
more,’ falters Jo, ‘and be so kind any person as is a-passin ni=
gh
where I used fur to sleep, as jist to say to Mr Sangsby that Jo, wot he kno=
wn
once, is a-moving on right forards with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful.
I'd be more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an
unfortnet to be it.’
He makes so many of these references to the la=
w-stationer
in the course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr Jarndyce,
good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook's Court, the rather, as the cart se=
ems
to be breaking down.
To Cook's Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr Sna=
gsby
is behind his counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture=
of
several skins which has just come in from the engrosser's, an immense deser=
t of
law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place of a few large
letters to break the awful monotony and save the traveller from despair. Mr
Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells and greets the stranger with his
cough of general preparation for business.
‘You don't remember me, Mr Snagsby?̵=
7;
The stationer's heart begins to thump heavily,=
for
his old apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to answ=
er, ‘No,
sir, I can't say I do. I should have considered--not to put too fine a point
upon it--that I never saw you before, sir.’
‘Twice before,’ says Allan Woodcou=
rt. ‘Once
at a poor bedside, and once--’
‘It's come at last!’ thinks the
afflicted stationer, as recollection breaks upon him. ‘It's got to a =
head
now and is going to burst!’ But he has sufficient presence of mind to
conduct his visitor into the little counting-house and to shut the door.
‘Are you a married man, sir?’
‘No, I am not.’
‘Would you make the attempt, though sing=
le,’
says Mr Snagsby in a melancholy whisper, ‘to speak as low as you can?=
For
my little woman is a-listening somewheres, or I'll forfeit the business and
five hundred pound!’
In deep dejection Mr Snagsby sits down on his
stool, with his back against his desk, protesting, ‘I never had a sec=
ret
of my own, sir. I can't charge my memory with ever having once attempted to
deceive my little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn=
't
have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn't have done
it, I dursn't have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I find myself wrapped
round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a burden to me.’
His visitor professes his regret to hear it and
asks him does he remember Jo. Mr Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, o=
h,
don't he!
‘You couldn't name an individual human
being--except myself--that my little woman is more set and determined again=
st
than Jo,’ says Mr Snagsby.
Allan asks why.
‘Why?’ repeats Mr Snagsby, in his
desperation clutching at the clump of hair at the back of his bald head. =
8216;How
should I know why? But you are a single person, sir, and may you long be sp=
ared
to ask a married person such a question!’
With this beneficent wish, Mr Snagsby coughs a
cough of dismal resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor ha=
s to
communicate.
‘There again!’ says Mr Snagsby, wh=
o,
between the earnestness of his feelings and the suppressed tones of his voi=
ce
is discoloured in the face. ‘At it again, in a new direction! A certa=
in
person charges me, in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even=
my
little woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself,=
and
charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that other certa=
in
person above all other persons. Why, this is a private asylum! Why, not to =
put
too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam, sir!’ says Mr Snagsby.
But it is better than he expected after all, b=
eing
no explosion of the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has
fallen. And being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo=
's
condition, he readily engages to ‘look round’ as early in the
evening as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the
evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs Snagsby is as quiet a manager as
he.
Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says,
when they are left alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr Sangsby shou=
ld
come so far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr Snagsby, touched =
by
the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a crown, that
magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.
‘And how do you find yourself, my poor l=
ad?’
inquires the stationer with his cough of sympathy.
‘I am in luck, Mr Sangsby, I am,’
returns Jo, ‘and don't want for nothink. I'm more cumfbler nor you ca=
n't
think. Mr Sangsby! I'm wery sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur to do=
it,
sir.’
The stationer softly lays down another half-cr=
own
and asks him what it is that he is sorry for having done.
‘Mr Sangsby,’ says Jo, ‘I we=
nt
and giv a illness to the lady as wos and yit as warn't the t'other lady, and
none of 'em never says nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of the=
ir
being ser good and my having been s'unfortnet. The lady come herself and se=
e me
yesday, and she ses, 'Ah, Jo!' she ses. 'We thought we'd lost you, Jo!' she
ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a word nor yit a l=
ook
upon me for having done it, she don't, and I turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr
Sangsby. And Mr Jarnders, I see him a-forced to turn away his own self. And=
Mr
Woodcot, he come fur to giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a-d=
oin'
on day and night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bol=
d, I
see his tears a-fallin, Mr Sangsby.’
The softened stationer deposits another half-c=
rown
on the table. Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will
relieve his feelings.
‘Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr Sangsby,R=
17;
proceeds Jo, ‘wos, as you wos able to write wery large, p'raps?’=
;
‘Yes, Jo, please God,’ returns the
stationer.
‘Uncommon precious large, p'raps?’
says Jo with eagerness.
‘Yes, my poor boy.’
Jo laughs with pleasure. ‘Wot I wos
a-thinking on then, Mr Sangsby, wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as eve=
r I
could go and couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'ra=
ps
as to write out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that=
I
wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to do =
it,
and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr Woodcot once cr=
ied
over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to
forgive me in his mind. If the writin could be made to say it wery large, he
might.’
‘It shall say it, Jo. Very large.’=
Jo laughs again. ‘Thankee, Mr Sangsby. I=
t's
wery kind of you, sir, and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore.’=
;
The meek little stationer, with a broken and
unfinished cough, slips down his fourth half-crown--he has never been so cl=
ose
to a case requiring so many--and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this
little earth, shall meet no more. No more.
For the cart so hard to draw is near its journ=
ey's
end and drags over stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the brok=
en
steps, shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it st=
ill
upon its weary road.
Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at
once acts as nurse and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, o=
ften
looking round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouragi=
ng
elevation of his one eyebrow, ‘Hold up, my boy! Hold up!’ There,
too, is Mr Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both
thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast in the =
web
of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a frequent visitor, fil=
ling
the doorway with his athletic figure and, from his superfluity of life and
strength, seeming to shed down temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to
speak more robustly in answer to his cheerful words.
Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Al=
lan
Woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form.
After a while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards
him--just as he sat in the law-writer's room--and touches his chest and hea=
rt.
The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little more.
The trooper stands in the doorway, still and
silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in=
his
hand. Mr Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and
attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to =
Phil
to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next used, there will be a
speck of rust upon it.
‘Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be
frightened.’
‘I thought,’ says Jo, who has star=
ted
and is looking round, ‘I thought I was in Tom-all-Alone's agin. Ain't
there nobody here but you, Mr Woodcot?’
‘Nobody.’
‘And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone'=
s.
Am I, sir?’
‘No.’ Jo closes his eyes, mutterin=
g, ‘I'm
wery thankful.’
After watching him closely a little while, All=
an
puts his mouth very near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, =
‘Jo!
Did you ever know a prayer?’
‘Never knowd nothink, sir.’
‘Not so much as one short prayer?’=
‘No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr Chadbands he
wos a-prayin wunst at Mr Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he=
wos
a- speakin to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn't make =
out
nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down
Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other 'wuns pray=
ed
wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing
blame on the t'others, and not a- talkin to us. WE never knowd nothink. I n=
ever
knowd what it wos all about.’
It takes him a long time to say this, and few =
but
an experienced and attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand h=
im.
After a short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong
effort to get out of bed.
‘Stay, Jo! What now?’
‘It's time for me to go to that there
berryin ground, sir,’ he returns with a wild look.
‘Lie down, and tell me. What burying gro=
und,
Jo?’
‘Where they laid him as wos wery good to=
me,
wery good to me indeed, he wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there
berryin ground, sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there =
and
be berried. He used fur to say to me, 'I am as poor as you to- day, Jo,' he
ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have come there t=
o be
laid along with him.’
‘By and by, Jo. By and by.’
‘Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos=
to
go myself. But will you promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along =
with
him?’
‘I will, indeed.’
‘Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They'll hav=
e to
get the key of the gate afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. A=
nd
there's a step there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It's turned wery
dark, sir. Is there any light a-comin?’
‘It is coming fast, Jo.’
Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the
rugged road is very near its end.
‘Jo, my poor fellow!’
‘I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm
a-gropin--a-gropin--let me catch hold of your hand.’
‘Jo, can you say what I say?’
‘I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I
knows it's good.’
‘Our Father.’
‘Our Father! Yes, that's wery good, sir.=
’
‘Which art in heaven.’
‘Art in heaven--is the light a-comin, si=
r?’
‘It is close at hand. Hallowed by thy na=
me!’
‘Hallowed be--thy--’
The light is come upon the dark benighted way.
Dead!
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlem=
en.
Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and wom=
en,
born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every
day.
The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many ey=
es
again, and the house in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the =
past
doze in their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long
drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the Dedloc=
ks
of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the darkness of =
the
night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or hair-powder) on their head=
s,
symptomatic of their great humility, loll away the drowsy mornings in the
little windows of the hall. The fashionable world--tremendous orb, nearly f=
ive
miles round--is in full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at i=
ts
appointed distances.
Where the throng is thickest, where the lights=
are
brightest, where all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy
and refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled and
taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed in herself=
as
one able to reserve whatsoever she would under her mantle of pride is beaten
down, though she has no assurance that what she is to those around her she =
will
remain another day, it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking o=
n to
yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown more handsome =
and
more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of her that she's beauty
nough--tsetup shopofwomen--but rather larming
kind--remindingmanfact--inconvenient woman--who WILL
getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment--Shakespeare.
Mr Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. No=
w,
as heretofore, he is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white
cravat loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from=
the
peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who might be su=
pposed
to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women she is still the last who
might be supposed to have any dread of him.
One thing has been much on her mind since their
late interview in his turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and
prepared to throw it off.
It is morning in the great world, afternoon
according to the little sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of win=
dow,
are reposing in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures,
like overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of se=
ed
in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has fallen asle=
ep
for the good of the country over the report of a Parliamentary committee. My
Lady sits in the room in which she gave audience to the young man of the na=
me
of Guppy. Rosa is with her and has been writing for her and reading to her.
Rosa is now at work upon embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she b=
ends
her head over it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time
to-day.
‘Rosa.’
The pretty village face looks brightly up. The=
n,
seeing how serious my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised.
‘See to the door. Is it shut?’
Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet
more surprised.
‘I am about to place confidence in you,
child, for I know I may trust your attachment, if not your judgment. In wha=
t I
am going to do, I will not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in
you. Say nothing to any one of what passes between us.’
The timid little beauty promises in all
earnestness to be trustworthy.
‘Do you know,’ Lady Dedlock asks h=
er,
signing to her to bring her chair nearer, ‘do you know, Rosa, that I =
am
different to you from what I am to any one?’
‘Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I o=
ften
think I know you as you really are.’
‘You often think you know me as I really=
am?
Poor child, poor child!’
She says it with a kind of scorn--though not of
Rosa--and sits brooding, looking dreamily at her.
‘Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief =
or
comfort to me? Do you suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me =
and
grateful to me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?’
‘I don't know, my Lady; I can scarcely h=
ope
so. But with all my heart, I wish it was so.’
‘It is so, little one.’
The pretty face is checked in its flush of ple=
asure
by the dark expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for=
an
explanation.
‘And if I were to say to-day, 'Go! Leave
me!' I should say what would give me great pain and disquiet, child, and wh=
at
would leave me very solitary.’
‘My Lady! Have I offended you?’
‘In nothing. Come here.’
Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady's
feet. My Lady, with that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays
her hand upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.
‘I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to =
be
happy and that I would make you so if I could make anybody happy on this ea=
rth.
I cannot. There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no p=
art,
rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You must n=
ot remain
here. I have determined that you shall not. I have written to the father of
your lover, and he will be here to-day. All this I have done for your sake.=
’
The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses a=
nd
says what shall she do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her
mistress kisses her on the cheek and makes no other answer.
‘Now, be happy, child, under better
circumstances. Be beloved and happy!’
‘Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes
thought--forgive my being so free-- that YOU are not happy.’
‘I!’
‘Will you be more so when you have sent =
me
away? Pray, pray, think again. Let me stay a little while!’
‘I have said, my child, that what I do, =
I do
for your sake, not my own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what=
I
am now-- not what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep =
my
confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!’
She detaches herself from her simple-hearted
companion and leaves the room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears
upon the staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indiffer=
ent
as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the earlier a=
ges
of the world and had perished from its surface with its other departed
monsters.
Mercury has announced Mr Rouncewell, which is =
the
cause of her appearance. Mr Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repai=
rs
to the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him firs=
t.
‘Sir Leicester, I am desirous--but you a=
re
engaged.’
Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr Tulkinghorn.<= o:p>
Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relie=
f or
security from him for a moment.
‘I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will y=
ou
allow me to retire?’
With a look that plainly says, ‘You know=
you
have the power to remain if you will,’ she tells him it is not necess=
ary
and moves towards a chair. Mr Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her
with his clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between =
her
and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls upon =
her,
and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her life.
It is a dull street under the best conditions,
where the two long rows of houses stare at each other with that severity th=
at
half-a- dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into
stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a street of such
dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to liveliness, that the do=
ors
and windows hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust, and t=
he
echoing mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were rese=
rved
to stable the stone chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-=
work
entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from th=
ese
petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart =
gas.
Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which bold boys aspire to t=
hrow
their friends' caps (its only present use), retains its place among the rus=
ty
foliage, sacred to the memory of departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet
lingering at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the
bottom like an oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like i=
ts
high and dry master in the House of Lords.
Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock,
seated in her chair, could wish to see through the window in which Mr
Tulkinghorn stands. And yet--and yet--she sends a look in that direction as=
if
it were her heart's desire to have that figure moved out of the way.
Sir Leicester begs his Lady's pardon. She was
about to say?
‘Only that Mr Rouncewell is here (he has
called by my appointment) and that we had better make an end of the questio=
n of
that girl. I am tired to death of the matter.’
‘What can I do--to--assist?’ deman=
ds
Sir Leicester in some considerable doubt.
‘Let us see him here and have done with =
it.
Will you tell them to send him up?’
‘Mr Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring.
Thank you. Request,’ says Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately
remembering the business term, ‘request the iron gentleman to walk th=
is
way.’
Mercury departs in search of the iron gentlema=
n,
finds, and produces him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person
graciously.
‘I hope you are well, Mr Rouncewell. Be
seated. (My solicitor, Mr Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr Rouncewell=
,’
Sir Leicester skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, ̵=
6;was
desirous to speak with you. Hem!’
‘I shall be very happy,’ returns t=
he
iron gentleman, ‘to give my best attention to anything Lady Dedlock d=
oes
me the honour to say.’
As he turns towards her, he finds that the
impression she makes upon him is less agreeable than on the former occasion=
. A
distant supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is
nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness.
‘Pray, sir,’ says Lady Dedlock
listlessly, ‘may I be allowed to inquire whether anything has passed
between you and your son respecting your son's fancy?’
It is almost too troublesome to her languid ey=
es
to bestow a look upon him as she asks this question.
‘If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I
said, when I had the pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously
advise my son to conquer that--fancy.’ The ironmaster repeats her
expression with a little emphasis.
‘And did you?’
‘Oh! Of course I did.’
Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and
confirmatory. Very proper. The iron gentleman, having said that he would do=
it,
was bound to do it. No difference in this respect between the base metals a=
nd
the precious. Highly proper.
‘And pray has he done so?’
‘Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you=
a
definite reply. I fear not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we
sometimes couple an intention with our--our fancies which renders them not
altogether easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest=
.’
Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may b=
e a
hidden Wat Tylerish meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr
Rouncewell is perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits,
evidently adapts his tone to his reception.
‘Because,’ proceeds my Lady, ̵=
6;I
have been thinking of the subject, which is tiresome to me.’
‘I am very sorry, I am sure.’
‘And also of what Sir Leicester said upon
it, in which I quite concur’--Sir Leicester flattered--’and if =
you
cannot give us the assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to t=
he
conclusion that the girl had better leave me.’
‘I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedl=
ock.
Nothing of the kind.’
‘Then she had better go.’
‘Excuse me, my Lady,’ Sir Leicester
considerately interposes, ‘but perhaps this may be doing an injury to=
the
young woman which she has not merited. Here is a young woman,’ says S=
ir
Leicester, magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a
service of plate, ‘whose good fortune it is to have attracted the not=
ice
and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the protection of that emi=
nent
lady, surrounded by the various advantages which such a position confers, a=
nd
which are unquestionably very great--I believe unquestionably very great,
sir--for a young woman in that station of life. The question then arises,
should that young woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good
fortune simply because she has’--Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but
dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up his
sentence--’has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son? Now, has =
she
deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this our previous
understanding?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ interposes Mr
Rouncewell's son's father. ‘Sir Leicester, will you allow me? I think=
I
may shorten the subject. Pray dismiss that from your consideration. If you
remember anything so unimportant--which is not to be expected--you would
recollect that my first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her
remaining here.’
Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from considerati=
on?
Oh! Sir Leicester is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed =
down
to him through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their repo=
rt
of the iron gentleman's observations.
‘It is not necessary,’ observes my
Lady in her coldest manner before he can do anything but breathe amazedly, =
‘to
enter into these matters on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I ha=
ve
nothing whatever to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her ma=
ny
advantages and her good fortune that she is in love--or supposes she is, po=
or
little fool--and unable to appreciate them.’
Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alte=
rs
the case. He might have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and rea=
sons
in support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman had
better go.
‘As Sir Leicester observed, Mr Rouncewel=
l,
on the last occasion when we were fatigued by this business,’ Lady
Dedlock languidly proceeds, ‘we cannot make conditions with you. With=
out
conditions, and under present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced he=
re
and had better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back=
to
the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would you pref=
er?’
‘Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly--&=
#8217;
‘By all means.’
‘--I should prefer the course which will=
the
soonest relieve you of the incumbrance and remove her from her present
position.’
‘And to speak as plainly,’ she ret=
urns
with the same studied carelessness, ‘so should I. Do I understand that
you will take her with you?’
The iron gentleman makes an iron bow.
‘Sir Leicester, will you ring?’ Mr
Tulkinghorn steps forward from his window and pulls the bell. ‘I had
forgotten you. Thank you.’ He makes his usual bow and goes quietly ba=
ck
again. Mercury, swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to
produce, skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs.
Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On
her coming in, the ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and
remains with her near the door ready to depart.
‘You are taken charge of, you see,’
says my Lady in her weary manner, ‘and are going away well protected.=
I
have mentioned that you are a very good girl, and you have nothing to cry f=
or.’
‘She seems after all,’ observes Mr
Tulkinghorn, loitering a little forward with his hands behind him, ‘a=
s if
she were crying at going away.’
‘Why, she is not well-bred, you see,R=
17;
returns Mr Rouncewell with some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad=
to
have the lawyer to retort upon, ‘and she is an inexperienced little t=
hing
and knows no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved=
, no
doubt.’
‘No doubt,’ is Mr Tulkinghorn's
composed reply.
Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave =
my
Lady, and that she was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my La=
dy,
and that she thanks my Lady over and over again. ‘Out, you silly litt=
le
puss!’ says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not
angrily. ‘Have a spirit, if you're fond of Watt!’ My Lady merely
waves her off with indifference, saying, ‘There, there, child! You ar=
e a
good girl. Go away!’ Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himse=
lf
from the subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr
Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted with lam=
ps,
looms in my Lady's view, bigger and blacker than before.
‘Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock,’ =
says
Mr Rouncewell after a pause of a few moments, ‘I beg to take my leave,
with an apology for having again troubled you, though not of my own act, on
this tiresome subject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tireso=
me
so small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of my
dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly exert my
influence to take my young friend here away without troubling you at all. B=
ut
it appeared to me--I dare say magnifying the importance of the thing--that =
it
was respectful to explain to you how the matter stood and candid to consult
your wishes and convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance
with the polite world.’
Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of =
the
sanctuary by these remarks. ‘Mr Rouncewell,’ he returns, ‘=
;do
not mention it. Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side.R=
17;
‘I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; an=
d if
I may, by way of a last word, revert to what I said before of my mother's l=
ong
connexion with the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would
point out this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectio=
nate
and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done somethi=
ng
to awaken such feelings-- though of course Lady Dedlock, by her heartfelt
interest and her genial condescension, has done much more.’
If he mean this ironically, it may be truer th=
an
he thinks. He points it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward
manner of speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim
room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting salutat=
ion,
Mr Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another flight, and Mr Rouncewell=
and
Rosa leave the house.
Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr
Tulkinghorn still standing in his window with his hands behind him and my L=
ady
still sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night =
as
well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr Tulkinghorn, observing it as she r=
ises
to retire, thinks, ‘Well she may be! The power of this woman is
astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole time.’ But he can a=
ct a
part too--his one unchanging character--and as he holds the door open for t=
his
woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester's p=
air,
should find no flaw in him.
Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-da=
y.
Sir Leicester is whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the
discomfiture of the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to
dinner, still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated
cousin's text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr Tulkinghorn is gone
yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What is he doing?
Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library. Would my Lady wish to =
see
him? Anything but that.
But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more
minutes he is reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to
receive him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him no=
w.
He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission, while she =
is
at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to dispense with such
mockeries.
‘What do you want, sir?’
‘Why, Lady Dedlock,’ says the lawy=
er,
taking a chair at a little distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty l=
egs
up and down, up and down, up and down, ‘I am rather surprised by the
course you have taken.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for =
it.
I consider it a departure from our agreement and your promise. It puts us i=
n a
new position, Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying tha=
t I
don't approve of it.’
He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with=
his
hands on his knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still=
an
indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not escape th=
is
woman's observation.
‘I do not quite understand you.’
‘Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do.
Come, come, Lady Dedlock, we must not fence and parry now. You know you like
this girl.’
‘Well, sir?’
‘And you know--and I know--that you have=
not
sent her away for the reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of
separating her as much as possible from--excuse my mentioning it as a matte=
r of
business--any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself.’
‘Well, sir?’
‘Well, Lady Dedlock,’ returns the
lawyer, crossing his legs and nursing the uppermost knee. ‘I object to
that. I consider that a dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary a=
nd
calculated to awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the
house. Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly =
what
you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it is to me, t=
hat
you have been this evening very different from what you were before. Why, b=
less
my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!’
‘If, sir,’ she begins, ‘in my
knowledge of my secret--’ But he interrupts her.
‘Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of
business, and in a matter of business the ground cannot be kept too clear. =
It
is no longer your secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my sec=
ret,
in trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady
Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation.’
‘That is very true. If in my knowledge of
THE secret I do what I can to spare an innocent girl (especially, rememberi=
ng
your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at
Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution=
I
have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it or
could move me.’ This she says with great deliberation and distinctness
and with no more outward passion than himself. As for him, he methodically
discusses his matter of business as if she were any insensible instrument u=
sed
in business.
‘Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock,R=
17;
he returns, ‘you are not to be trusted. You have put the case in a
perfectly plain way, and according to the literal fact; and that being the
case, you are not to be trusted.’
‘Perhaps you may remember that I express=
ed
some anxiety on this same point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?R=
17;
‘Yes,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, coolly
getting up and standing on the hearth. ‘Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedloc=
k,
that you certainly referred to the girl, but that was before we came to our
arrangement, and both the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogeth=
er
precluded any action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no
doubt about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is sh=
e?
Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One might have supp=
osed
that the course was straight on--over everything, neither to the right nor =
to
the left, regardless of all considerations in the way, sparing nothing,
treading everything under foot.’
She has been looking at the table. She lifts up
her eyes and looks at him. There is a stern expression on her face and a pa=
rt
of her lower lip is compressed under her teeth. ‘This woman understan=
ds
me,’ Mr Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. ‘=
SHE
cannot be spared. Why should she spare others?’
For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlo=
ck
has eaten no dinner, but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady
hand and drunk it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclin=
es
in it, shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness=
or
excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. ‘This woma=
n,’
thinks Mr Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark object closing =
up
her view, ‘is a study.’
He studies her at his leisure, not speaking fo=
r a
time. She too studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to spe=
ak,
appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until midnight,
that even he is driven upon breaking silence.
‘Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable par=
t of
this business interview remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broke=
n. A
lady of your sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now
declaring it void and taking my own course.’
‘I am quite prepared.’
Mr Tulkinghorn inclines his head. ‘That =
is
all I have to trouble you with, Lady Dedlock.’
She stops him as he is moving out of the room =
by
asking, ‘This is the notice I was to receive? I wish not to misappreh=
end
you.’
‘Not exactly the notice you were to rece=
ive,
Lady Dedlock, because the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have
been observed. But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is
merely in a lawyer's mind.’
‘You intend to give me no other notice?&=
#8217;
‘You are right. No.’
‘Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir
Leicester to-night?’
‘A home question!’ says Mr Tulking=
horn
with a slight smile and cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. =
216;No,
not to- night.’
‘To-morrow?’
‘All things considered, I had better dec=
line
answering that question, Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don't know when,
exactly, you would not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be
to-morrow. I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no
expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you good
evening.’
She removes her hand, turns her pale face towa=
rds
him as he walks silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is abo=
ut
to open it.
‘Do you intend to remain in the house any
time? I heard you were writing in the library. Are you going to return ther=
e?’
‘Only for my hat. I am going home.’=
;
She bows her eyes rather than her head, the
movement is so slight and curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he l=
ooks
at his watch but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There =
is a
splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not often are,
for its accuracy. ‘And what do YOU say,’ Mr Tulkinghorn inquire=
s,
referring to it. ‘What do you say?’
If it said now, ‘Don't go home!’ W=
hat
a famous clock, hereafter, if it said to-night of all the nights that it has
counted off, to this old man of all the young and old men who have ever sto=
od
before it, ‘Don't go home!’ With its sharp clear bell it strikes
three quarters after seven and ticks on again. ‘Why, you are worse th=
an I
thought you,’ says Mr Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. =
8216;Two
minutes wrong? At this rate you won't last my time.’ What a watch to
return good for evil if it ticked in answer, ‘Don't go home!’
He passes out into the streets and walks on, w=
ith
his hands behind him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose
mysteries, difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are
treasured up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence =
of
the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family secret=
s to
him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to whisper, ‘Don't go
home!’
Through the stir and motion of the commoner
streets; through the roar and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices;=
with
the blazing shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and =
the
crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing mee=
ts
him murmuring, ‘Don't go home!’ Arrived at last in his dull roo=
m to
light his candles, and look round and up, and see the Roman pointing from t=
he
ceiling, there is no new significance in the Roman's hand to-night or in the
flutter of the attendant groups to give him the late warning, ‘Don't =
come
here!’
It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being p=
ast
the full, is only now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars=
are
shining as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, a=
s he
has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them. Her soul is
turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless. The large rooms are
too cramped and close. She cannot endure their restraint and will walk alon=
e in
a neighbouring garden.
Too capricious and imperious in all she does t=
o be
the cause of much surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this
woman, loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with t=
he
key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his Lady's han=
ds
at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk there some time to e=
ase
her aching head. She may be an hour, she may be more. She needs no further
escort. The gate shuts upon its spring with a clash, and he leaves her pass=
ing
on into the dark shade of some trees.
A fine night, and a bright large moon, and
multitudes of stars. Mr Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in open=
ing
and shutting those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard=
. He
looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, wh=
at
multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
A very quiet night. When the moon shines very
brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influen=
ce
even crowded places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high
roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in
repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees again=
st
the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still ni=
ght
in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh=
and
green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, =
and
whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where
houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves=
and
shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, wher=
e it
expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield
wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not =
only
is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands =
to
see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to =
be
presented to only him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London the=
re
is some rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more
ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale effulgence;=
the
noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the
footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. In these fields of Mr
Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that h=
ave
no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they h=
ave
shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, in=
to a
distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where =
was
it?
The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare
about them. Some windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look.=
It
was a loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so=
a
man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the neighbourhood,=
who
bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the road. While the dogs are=
yet
barking and howling--there is one dog howling like a demon--the church-cloc=
ks,
as if they were startled too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets,
likewise, seems to swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last
clock begins to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine
night, the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace ag=
ain.
Has Mr Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows=
are
dark and quiet, and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to
bring him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of him.
What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man out of his
immovable composure?
For many years the persistent Roman has been
pointing, with no particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely t=
hat
he has any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing--like
any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt, in his
impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long. Moonlight,
darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly pointing, and no o=
ne
minds him.
But a little after the coming of the day come
people to clean the rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him,
not expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up at =
his
outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks=
and
flies. The others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, =
and
there is an alarm in the street.
What does it mean? No light is admitted into t=
he
darkened chamber, and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly =
but
heavily, carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whisperi=
ng
and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing of st=
eps,
and careful noting of the disposition of every article of furniture. All ey=
es
look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, ‘If he could only tell w=
hat
he saw!’
He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly
full of wine) and a glass upon it and two candles that were blown out sudde=
nly
soon after being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain u=
pon
the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These objects
lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might suppose that th=
ere
was something in them so terrific as to drive the rest of the composition, =
not
only the attendant big-legged boys, but the clouds and flowers and pillars
too--in short, the very body and soul of Allegory, and all the brains it
has--stark mad. It happens surely that every one who comes into the darkened
room and looks at these things looks up at the Roman and that he is investe=
d in
all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.
So it shall happen surely, through many years =
to
come, that ghostly stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so ea=
sy
to be covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the
ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him, with f=
ar
greater significance than he ever had in Mr Tulkinghorn's time, and with a
deadly meaning. For Mr Tulkinghorn's time is over for evermore, and the Rom=
an
pointed at the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed helple=
ssly
at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot throu=
gh
the heart.
A great annual occasion has come round in the
establishment of Mr Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman=
and
present bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebrati=
on
of a birthday in the family.
It is not Mr Bagnet's birthday. Mr Bagnet mere=
ly
distinguishes that epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the
children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe a=
fter
dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking
about it--a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother
having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely revert to their fat=
her,
but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all t=
he
stock of filial affection into their mother's name. Mr Bagnet is one of like
his trade the better for that. If I had kept clear of his old girl causes h=
im
usually to make the noun- substantive ‘goodness’ of the feminine
gender.
It is not the birthday of one of the three
children. Those occasions are kept with some marks of distinction, but they
rarely overleap the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwic=
h's
last birthday, Mr Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and
general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on the cha=
nges
wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism, accomplishing with extreme
accuracy the questions number one and two, ‘What is your name?’=
and
‘Who gave you that name?’ but there failing in the exact precis=
ion
of his memory and substituting for number three the question ‘And how=
do
you like that name?’ which he propounded with a sense of its importan=
ce,
in itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. Th=
is,
however, was a speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general
solemnity.
It is the old girl's birthday, and that is the
greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr Bagnet's calendar. The auspic=
ious
event is always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescri=
bed
by Mr Bagnet some years since. Mr Bagnet, being deeply convinced that to ha=
ve a
pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury,
invariably goes forth himself very early in the morning of this day to buy a
pair; he is, as invariably, taken in by the vendor and installed in the
possession of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with
these triumphs of toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton
handkerchief (essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites=
Mrs
Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs Bagnet, =
by a
coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr Bagnet instantly produc=
es
his bundle from a place of concealment amidst general amazement and rejoici=
ng.
He further requires that the old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit=
in
her very best gown and be served by himself and the young people. As he is =
not
illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of state
rather than enjoyment on the old girl's part, but she keeps her state with =
all
imaginable cheerfulness.
On this present birthday, Mr Bagnet has
accomplished the usual preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultr=
y,
which, if there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaf=
f,
to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by their
unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting of the poultr=
y;
and Mrs Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers itching to prevent what she
sees going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an honoured guest.
Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, whi=
le
Woolwich, serving, as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolv=
ing.
To these young scullions Mrs Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake=
of
the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.
‘At half after one.’ Says Mr Bagne=
t. ‘To
the minute. They'll be done.’
Mrs Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them =
at a
standstill before the fire and beginning to burn.
‘You shall have a dinner, old girl,̵=
7;
says Mr Bagnet. ‘Fit for a queen.’
Mrs Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, b=
ut
to the perception of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he =
is
impelled by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the
matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the fowls
than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to consciousness.
Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of the agitation in Mrs
Bagnet's breast and with an admonitory poke recalls him. The stopped fowls
going round again, Mrs Bagnet closes her eyes in the intensity of her relie=
f.
‘George will look us up,’ says Mr
Bagnet. ‘At half after four. To the moment. How many years, old girl.=
Has
George looked us up. This afternoon?’
‘Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an =
old
woman of a young one, I begin to think. Just about that, and no less,’
returns Mrs Bagnet, laughing and shaking her head.
‘Old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet, ‘=
;never
mind. You'd be as young as ever you was. If you wasn't younger. Which you a=
re.
As everybody knows.’
Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of
hands, that Bluffy is sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculat=
e on
what it will be.
‘Do you know, Lignum,’ says Mrs
Bagnet, casting a glance on the table-cloth, and winking ‘salt!’=
; at
Malta with her right eye, and shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her
head, ‘I begin to think George is in the roving way again.’
‘George,’ returns Mr Bagnet, ̵=
6;will
never desert. And leave his old comrade. In the lurch. Don't be afraid of i=
t.’
‘No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I
don't think he will. But if he could get over this money trouble of his, I
believe he would be off.’
Mr Bagnet asks why.
‘Well,’ returns his wife, consider=
ing,
‘George seems to me to be getting not a little impatient and restless=
. I
don't say but what he's as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he
wouldn't be George, but he smarts and seems put out.’
‘He's extra-drilled,’ says Mr Bagn=
et. ‘By
a lawyer. Who would put the devil out.’
‘There's something in that,’ his w=
ife
assents; ‘but so it is, Lignum.’
Further conversation is prevented, for the tim=
e,
by the necessity under which Mr Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole
force of his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry hu=
mour
of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made gravy acquirin=
g no
flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion. With a similar perverseness,
the potatoes crumble off forks in the process of peeling, upheaving from th=
eir
centres in every direction, as if they were subject to earthquakes. The leg=
s of
the fowls, too, are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly.
Overcoming these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr Bagnet at last
dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs Bagnet occupying the guest's place at
his right hand.
It is well for the old girl that she has but o=
ne
birthday in a year, for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious.
Every kind of finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to
possess is developed in these specimens in the singular form of guitar-stri=
ngs.
Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their breasts and bodies, as a=
ged
trees strike roots into the earth. Their legs are so hard as to encourage t=
he
idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and arduous
lives to pedestrian exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr Bagnet,
unconscious of these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs Bagnet eating a =
most
severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old girl wou=
ld
not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, least of all on such a =
day,
for any consideration, she imperils her digestion fearfully. How young Wool=
wich
cleans the drum-sticks without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother=
is
at a loss to understand.
The old girl has another trial to undergo after
the conclusion of the repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, t=
he
hearth swept, and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard.
The great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply themselv=
es
to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of their mother and
skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the highest hopes
for the future, but some anxiety for the present. The same causes lead to
confusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a
whisking of brooms, and an expenditure of water, all in excess, while the
saturation of the young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle =
for Mrs
Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last the
various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec and Malta ap=
pear
in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco, and something to drink are
placed upon the table; and the old girl enjoys the first peace of mind she =
ever
knows on the day of this delightful entertainment.
When Mr Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands=
of
the clock are very near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr
Bagnet announces, ‘George! Military time.’
It is George, and he has hearty congratulations
for the old girl (whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the childr=
en,
and for Mr Bagnet. ‘Happy returns to all!’ says Mr George.
‘But, George, old man!’ cries Mrs
Bagnet, looking at him curiously. ‘What's come to you?’
‘Come to me?’
‘Ah! You are so white, George--for you--=
and
look so shocked. Now don't he, Lignum?’
‘George,’ says Mr Bagnet, ‘t=
ell
the old girl. What's the matter.’
‘I didn't know I looked white,’ sa=
ys
the trooper, passing his hand over his brow, ‘and I didn't know I loo=
ked
shocked, and I'm sorry I do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at=
my
place died yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over.’
‘Poor creetur!’ says Mrs Bagnet wi=
th a
mother's pity. ‘Is he gone? Dear, dear!’
‘I didn't mean to say anything about it,=
for
it's not birthday talk, but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit
down. I should have roused up in a minute,’ says the trooper, making
himself speak more gaily, ‘but you're so quick, Mrs Bagnet.’
‘You're right. The old girl,’ says=
Mr
Bagnet. ‘Is as quick. As powder.’
‘And what's more, she's the subject of t=
he
day, and we'll stick to her,’ cries Mr George. ‘See here, I have
brought a little brooch along with me. It's a poor thing, you know, but it'=
s a
keepsake. That's all the good it is, Mrs Bagnet.’
Mr George produces his present, which is greet=
ed
with admiring leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a specie=
s of
reverential admiration by Mr Bagnet. ‘Old girl,’ says Mr Bagnet=
. ‘Tell
him my opinion of it.’
‘Why, it's a wonder, George!’ Mrs
Bagnet exclaims. ‘It's the beautifullest thing that ever was seen!=
217;
‘Good!’ says Mr Bagnet. ‘My
opinion.’
‘It's so pretty, George,’ cries Mrs
Bagnet, turning it on all sides and holding it out at arm's length, ‘=
that
it seems too choice for me.’
‘Bad!’ says Mr Bagnet. ‘Not =
my
opinion.’
‘But whatever it is, a hundred thousand
thanks, old fellow,’ says Mrs Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure
and her hand stretched out to him; ‘and though I have been a crossgra=
ined
soldier's wife to you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sur=
e,
in reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for good l=
uck,
if you will, George.’
The children close up to see it done, and Mr
Bagnet looks over young Woolwich's head to see it done with an interest so
maturely wooden, yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs Bagnet cannot help laugh=
ing
in her airy way and saying, ‘Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old =
chap
you are!’ But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand shakes=
, he
is nervous, and it falls off. ‘Would any one believe this?’ says
he, catching it as it drops and looking round. ‘I am so out of sorts =
that
I bungle at an easy job like this!’
Mrs Bagnet concludes that for such a case ther=
e is
no remedy like a pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, cau=
ses
the trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be got
into action. ‘If that don't bring you round, George,’ says she,=
‘just
throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and the two togeth=
er
MUST do it.’
‘You ought to do it of yourself,’ =
George
answers; ‘I know that very well, Mrs Bagnet. I'll tell you how, one w=
ay
and another, the blues have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor l=
ad.
'Twas dull work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him.=
217;
‘What do you mean, George? You did help =
him.
You took him under your roof.’
‘I helped him so far, but that's little.=
I
mean, Mrs Bagnet, there he was, dying without ever having been taught much =
more
than to know his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be he=
lped
out of that.’
‘Ah, poor creetur!’ says Mrs Bagne=
t.
‘Then,’ says the trooper, not yet
lighting his pipe, and passing his heavy hand over his hair, ‘that
brought up Gridley in a man's mind. His was a bad case too, in a different =
way.
Then the two got mixed up in a man's mind with a flinty old rascal who had =
to
do with both. And to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standin=
g up
on end in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly--it ma=
de
flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you.’
‘My advice to you,’ returns Mrs
Bagnet, ‘is to light your pipe and tingle that way. It's wholesomer a=
nd
comfortabler, and better for the health altogether.’
‘You're right,’ says the trooper, =
‘and
I'll do it.’
So he does it, though still with an indignant
gravity that impresses the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr Bagnet to defer
the ceremony of drinking Mrs Bagnet's health, always given by himself on th=
ese
occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies having
composed what Mr Bagnet is in the habit of calling ‘the mixtur,’
and George's pipe being now in a glow, Mr Bagnet considers it his duty to
proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the assembled company in =
the
following terms.
‘George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is
her birthday. Take a day's march. And you won't find such another. Here's
towards her!’
The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, M=
rs
Bagnet returns thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model
composition is limited to the three words ‘And wishing yours!’
which the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a
well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the prese=
nt
occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, ‘Here's a man!’=
Here IS a man, much to the astonishment of the
little company, looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man--a q=
uick
keen man--and he takes in everybody's look at him, all at once, individually
and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a remarkable man.
‘George,’ says the man, nodding, &=
#8216;how
do you find yourself?’
‘Why, it's Bucket!’ cries Mr Georg=
e.
‘Yes,’ says the man, coming in and
closing the door. ‘I was going down the street here when I happened to
stop and look in at the musical instruments in the shop-window--a friend of
mine is in want of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone--and I saw a p=
arty
enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I thought I
couldn't be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George, at the present
moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma'am? And with you, governor? And Lor=
d,’
says Mr Bucket, opening his arms, ‘here's children too! You may do
anything with me if you only show me children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No
occasion to inquire who YOUR father and mother is. Never saw such a likenes=
s in
my life!’
Mr Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down
next to Mr George and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. ‘You pretty
dears,’ says Mr Bucket, ‘give us another kiss; it's the only th=
ing
I'm greedy in. Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ag=
es
of these two, ma'am? I should put 'em down at the figures of about eight and
ten.’
‘You're very near, sir,’ says Mrs
Bagnet.
‘I generally am near,’ returns Mr
Bucket, ‘being so fond of children. A friend of mine has had nineteen=
of
'em, ma'am, all by one mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the
morning. Not so much so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you!=
And
what do you call these, my darling?’ pursues Mr Bucket, pinching Malt=
a's
cheeks. ‘These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do =
you
think about father? Do you think father could recommend a second-hand
wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr Bucket's friend, my dear? My name's Buck=
et.
Ain't that a funny name?’
These blandishments have entirely won the fami=
ly
heart. Mrs Bagnet forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a gla=
ss
for Mr Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive=
so
pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him that as a f=
riend
of George's she is particularly glad to see him this evening, for George has
not been in his usual spirits.
‘Not in his usual spirits?’ exclai=
ms Mr
Bucket. ‘Why, I never heard of such a thing! What's the matter, Georg=
e?
You don't intend to tell me you've been out of spirits. What should you be =
out
of spirits for? You haven't got anything on your mind, you know.’
‘Nothing particular,’ returns the
trooper.
‘I should think not,’ rejoins Mr
Bucket. ‘What could you have on your mind, you know! And have these p=
ets
got anything on THEIR minds, eh? Not they, but they'll be upon the minds of
some of the young fellows, some of these days, and make 'em precious low-
spirited. I ain't much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma'am.’=
Mrs Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr Bucket has=
a
family of his own.
‘There, ma'am!’ says Mr Bucket. =
8216;Would
you believe it? No, I haven't. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. M=
rs
Bucket is as fond of children as myself and as wishful to have 'em, but no.=
So
it is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine. What a
very nice backyard, ma'am! Any way out of that yard, now?’
There is no way out of that yard.
‘Ain't there really?’ says Mr Buck=
et. ‘I
should have thought there might have been. Well, I don't know as I ever saw=
a
backyard that took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank y=
ou.
No, I see there's no way out. But what a very good- proportioned yard it is=
!’
Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr Buc=
ket
returns to his chair next his friend Mr George and pats Mr George
affectionately on the shoulder.
‘How are your spirits now, George?’=
;
‘All right now,’ returns the troop=
er.
‘That's your sort!’ says Mr Bucket=
. ‘Why
should you ever have been otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitu=
tion
has no right to be out of spirits. That ain't a chest to be out of spirits,=
is
it, ma'am? And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George; what
could you have on your mind!’
Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering t=
he
extent and variety of his conversational powers, Mr Bucket twice or thrice
repeats it to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is
particularly his own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this
brief eclipse and shines again.
‘And this is brother, is it, my dears?=
8217;
says Mr Bucket, referring to Quebec and Malta for information on the subjec=
t of
young Woolwich. ‘And a nice brother he is--half-brother I mean to say.
For he's too old to be your boy, ma'am.’
‘I can certify at all events that he is =
not
anybody else's,’ returns Mrs Bagnet, laughing.
‘Well, you do surprise me! Yet he's like
you, there's no denying. Lord, he's wonderfully like you! But about what you
may call the brow, you know, THERE his father comes out!’ Mr Bucket
compares the faces with one eye shut up, while Mr Bagnet smokes in stolid
satisfaction.
This is an opportunity for Mrs Bagnet to inform
him that the boy is George's godson.
‘George's godson, is he?’ rejoins =
Mr
Bucket with extreme cordiality. ‘I must shake hands over again with
George's godson. Godfather and godson do credit to one another. And what do=
you
intend to make of him, ma'am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrum=
ent?’
Mr Bagnet suddenly interposes, ‘Plays the
fife. Beautiful.’
‘Would you believe it, governor,’ =
says
Mr Bucket, struck by the coincidence, ‘that when I was a boy I played=
the
fife myself? Not in a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord
bless you! 'British Grenadiers'--there's a tune to warm an Englishman up! C=
OULD
you give us 'British Grenadiers,' my fine fellow?’
Nothing could be more acceptable to the little
circle than this call upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife=
and
performs the stirring melody, during which performance Mr Bucket, much
enlivened, beats time and never falls to come in sharp with the burden, =
216;British
Gra-a-anadeers!’ In short, he shows so much musical taste that Mr Bag=
net
actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a
singer. Mr Bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessi=
ng
how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of=
his
own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that =
he
is asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he
complies and gives them ‘Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Cha=
rms.’
This ballad, he informs Mrs Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powe=
rful
ally in moving the heart of Mrs Bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to
approach the altar--Mr Bucket's own words are ‘to come up to the scra=
tch.’
This sparkling stranger is such a new and
agreeable feature in the evening that Mr George, who testified no great
emotions of pleasure on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be ra=
ther
proud of him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy=
to
get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr Bagnet
becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his acquaintance t=
hat
he solicits the honour of his company on the old girl's next birthday. If
anything can more closely cement and consolidate the esteem which Mr Bucket=
has
formed for the family, it is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He
drinks to Mrs Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself =
for
that day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day in=
a
large black pocket- book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope that Mrs
Bucket and Mrs Bagnet may before then become, in a manner, sisters. As he s=
ays
himself, what is public life without private ties? He is in his humble way a
public man, but it is not in that sphere that he finds happiness. No, it mu=
st
be sought within the confines of domestic bliss.
It is natural, under these circumstances, that=
he,
in his turn, should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promi=
sing
an acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the subj=
ect
of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits to walk home =
with
him. He is interested in his very boots and observes even them attentively =
as Mr
George sits smoking cross-legged in the chimney-corner.
At length Mr George rises to depart. At the sa=
me
moment Mr Bucket, with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He do=
tes
upon the children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken
for an absent friend.
‘Respecting that second-hand wiolincelle=
r,
governor--could you recommend me such a thing?’
‘Scores,’ says Mr Bagnet.
‘I am obliged to you,’ returns Mr
Bucket, squeezing his hand. ‘You're a friend in need. A good tone, mi=
nd
you! My friend is a regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Han=
del
and the rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn't,̵=
7;
says Mr Bucket in a considerate and private voice, ‘you needn't commit
yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don't want to pay too large a pri=
ce
for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage and be remuner=
ated
for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man must live, and ought to =
it.’
Mr Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to t=
he
effect that they have found a jewel of price.
‘Suppose I was to give you a look in, sa=
y,
at half arter ten to- morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of=
a
few wiolincellers of a good tone?’ says Mr Bucket.
Nothing easier. Mr and Mrs Bagnet both engage =
to
have the requisite information ready and even hint to each other at the
practicability of having a small stock collected there for approval.
‘Thank you,’ says Mr Bucket, ̵=
6;thank
you. Good night, ma'am. Good night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am mu=
ch
obliged to you for one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life.=
’
They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him=
for
the pleasure he has given them in his company; and so they part with many
expressions of goodwill on both sides. ‘Now George, old boy,’ s=
ays Mr
Bucket, taking his arm at the shop-door, ‘come along!’ As they =
go
down the little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after the=
m, Mrs
Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr Bucket ‘almost clings to
George like, and seems to be really fond of him.’
The neighbouring streets being narrow and
ill-paved, it is a little inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in
arm. Mr George therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr Bucket, who
cannot make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, ‘Wa=
it
half a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first.’ Immediat=
ely
afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour, where he
confronts him and claps his own back against the door.
‘Now, George,’ says Mr Bucket, =
216;duty
is duty, and friendship is friendship. I never want the two to clash if I c=
an
help it. I have endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it =
to
you whether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody,
George.’
‘Custody? What for?’ returns the
trooper, thunderstruck.
‘Now, George,’ says Mr Bucket, urg=
ing
a sensible view of the case upon him with his fat forefinger, ‘duty, =
as
you know very well, is one thing, and conversation is another. It's my duty=
to
inform you that any observations you may make will be liable to be used aga=
inst
you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don't happen to have h=
eard
of a murder?’
‘Murder!’
‘Now, George,’ says Mr Bucket, kee=
ping
his forefinger in an impressive state of action, ‘bear in mind what I=
've
said to you. I ask you nothing. You've been in low spirits this afternoon. I
say, you don't happen to have heard of a murder?’
‘No. Where has there been a murder?̵=
7;
‘Now, George,’ says Mr Bucket, =
216;don't
you go and commit yourself. I'm a-going to tell you what I want you for. Th=
ere
has been a murder in Lincoln's Inn Fields--gentleman of the name of
Tulkinghorn. He was shot last night. I want you for that.’
The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and
great drops start out upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his
face.
‘Bucket! It's not possible that Mr
Tulkinghorn has been killed and that you suspect ME?’
‘George,’ returns Mr Bucket, keepi=
ng
his forefinger going, ‘it is certainly possible, because it's the cas=
e.
This deed was done last night at ten o'clock. Now, you know where you were =
last
night at ten o'clock, and you'll be able to prove it, no doubt.’
‘Last night! Last night?’ repeats =
the
trooper thoughtfully. Then it flashes upon him. ‘Why, great heaven, I=
was
there last night!’
‘So I have understood, George,’
returns Mr Bucket with great deliberation. ‘So I have understood.
Likewise you've been very often there. You've been seen hanging about the
place, and you've been heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it's
possible --I don't say it's certainly so, mind you, but it's possible--that=
he
may have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow.=
’
The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all =
if
he could speak.
‘Now, George,’ continues Mr Bucket,
putting his hat upon the table with an air of business rather in the uphols=
tery
way than otherwise, ‘my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to m=
ake
things pleasant. I tell you plainly there's a reward out, of a hundred guin=
eas,
offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always been plea=
sant
together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if that hundred guineas i=
s to
be made, it may as well be made by me as any other man. On all of which
accounts, I should hope it was clear to you that I must have you, and that =
I'm
damned if I don't have you. Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick
done?’
Mr George has recovered himself and stands up =
like
a soldier. ‘Come,’ he says; ‘I am ready.’
‘George,’ continues Mr Bucket, =
216;wait
a bit!’ With his upholsterer manner, as if the trooper were a window =
to
be fitted up, he takes from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. ‘This is a
serious charge, George, and such is my duty.’
The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a
moment, but holds out his two hands, clasped together, and says, ‘The=
re!
Put them on!’
Mr Bucket adjusts them in a moment. ‘How=
do
you find them? Are they comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make thi=
ngs
as pleasant as is consistent with my duty, and I've got another pair in my
pocket.’ This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxi=
ous
to execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his customer.=
‘They'll
do as they are? Very well! Now, you see, George’--he takes a cloak fr=
om a
corner and begins adjusting it about the trooper's neck--’I was mindf=
ul
of your feelings when I come out, and brought this on purpose. There! Who's=
the
wiser?’
‘Only I,’ returns the trooper, =
216;but
as I know it, do me one more good turn and pull my hat over my eyes.’=
‘Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain't i=
t a
pity? It looks so.’
‘I can't look chance men in the face with
these things on,’ Mr George hurriedly replies. ‘Do, for God's s=
ake,
pull my hat forward.’
So strongly entreated, Mr Bucket complies, puts
his own hat on, and conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marchi=
ng
on as steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr Bucket
steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.
It happened that when I came home from Deal I
found a note from Caddy Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), infor=
ming
me that her health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse a=
nd
that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to see her=
. It
was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on which she lay and encl=
osed
to me in another from her husband, in which he seconded her entreaty with m=
uch
solicitude. Caddy was now the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor
little baby--such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to =
be
scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand, al=
ways
clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day, with its br=
ight
specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so
small and weak. Whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it w=
as
so patient that the sole desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and
think. It had curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark
marks under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy's inky days, and
altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous little
sight.
But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used =
to
it. The projects with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther's
education, and little Esther's marriage, and even for her own old age as the
grandmother of little Esther's little Esthers, was so prettily expressive of
devotion to this pride of her life that I should be tempted to recall some =
of
them but for the timely remembrance that I am getting on irregularly as it =
is.
To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstit=
ion
about me which had been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long
ago when she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost--I think I
must say quite--believed that I did her good whenever I was near her. Now
although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that I am almost
ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of a fact when she=
was
really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my guardian's consent,
post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me that there never was anyt=
hing
like it.
Next day I went again to sit with her, and next
day I went again. It was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a litt=
le
earlier in the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping
matters before leaving home.
But when I had made these three visits, my
guardian said to me, on my return at night, ‘Now, little woman, little
woman, this will never do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and
constant coaching will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a w=
hile
and take possession of our old lodgings.’
‘Not for me, dear guardian,’ said =
I, ‘for
I never feel tired,’ which was strictly true. I was only too happy to=
be
in such request.
‘For me then,’ returned my guardia=
n, ‘or
for Ada, or for both of us. It is somebody's birthday to-morrow, I think.=
8217;
‘Truly I think it is,’ said I, kis=
sing
my darling, who would be twenty-one to-morrow.
‘Well,’ observed my guardian, half
pleasantly, half seriously, ‘that's a great occasion and will give my
fair cousin some necessary business to transact in assertion of her
independence, and will make London a more convenient place for all of us. S=
o to
London we will go. That being settled, there is another thing--how have you
left Caddy?’
‘Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be
some time before she regains her health and strength.’
‘What do you call some time, now?’
asked my guardian thoughtfully.
‘Some weeks, I am afraid.’
‘Ah!’ He began to walk about the r=
oom
with his hands in his pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much. &=
#8216;Now,
what do you say about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?’
I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing =
to
the contrary but that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we wou=
ld
like his opinion to be confirmed by some one.
‘Well, you know,’ returned my guar=
dian
quickly, ‘there's Woodcourt.’
I had not meant that, and was rather taken by
surprise. For a moment all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr
Woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me.
‘You don't object to him, little woman?&=
#8217;
‘Object to him, guardian? Oh no!’<= o:p>
‘And you don't think the patient would
object to him?’
So far from that, I had no doubt of her being
prepared to have a great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said =
that
he was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind
attendance on Miss Flite.
‘Very good,’ said my guardian. =
216;He
has been here to-day, my dear, and I will see him about it to-morrow.’=
;
I felt in this short conversation--though I did not know how, for she was quiet, and we interchanged no look--that my dear = girl well remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no other hands than Caddy's had brought me the little parting token. This caused me = to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master's love. Therefore, wh= en we went upstairs and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes on = her birthday and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life that was in store for for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at one t= ime than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that nigh= t. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted by the sense of having do= ne right in casting this last idle reservation away that I was ten times happi= er than I had been before. I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.<= o:p>
Next day we went to London. We found our old
lodging vacant, and in half an hour were quietly established there, as if we
had never gone away. Mr Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling's
birthday, and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among=
us
that Richard's absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that day I=
was
for some weeks--eight or nine as I remember--very much with Caddy, and thus=
it
fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than any other since we had fi=
rst
come together, except the time of my own illness. She often came to Caddy's,
but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in o=
ur
usual confidential manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, =
but
Caddy's rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.
With her husband and her poor little mite of a
baby to love and their home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! =
So
self- denying, so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so
afraid of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her
husband and the comforts of old Mr Turveydrop; I had never known the best of
her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face and helpless fig=
ure
should be lying there day after day where dancing was the business of life,
where the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball- ro=
om,
and where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the
afternoon.
At Caddy's request I took the supreme directio=
n of
her apartment, trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter=
and
more airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every d=
ay,
when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small namesake in=
her
arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It was at one of the firs=
t of
these quiet times that I told Caddy about Bleak House.
We had other visitors besides Ada. First of al=
l we
had Prince, who in his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in=
and
sit softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very little
child. Whatever Caddy's condition really was, she never failed to declare to
Prince that she was all but well--which I, heaven forgive me, never failed =
to
confirm. This would put Prince in such good spirits that he would sometimes
take the kit from his pocket and play a chord or two to astonish the baby,
which I never knew it to do in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never
noticed it at all.
Then there was Mrs Jellyby. She would come
occasionally, with her usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles
beyond her grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borriobo=
olan
on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as untidy, she
would say, ‘Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do to-day?’ And =
then
would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of the reply or would sweetly
glide off into a calculation of the number of letters she had lately receiv=
ed
and answered or of the coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she wo=
uld
always do with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be
disguised.
Then there was old Mr Turveydrop, who was from
morning to night and from night to morning the subject of innumerable
precautions. If the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should
make him uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was
surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy required any
little comfort that the house contained, she first carefully discussed whet=
her
he was likely to require it too. In return for this consideration he would =
come
into the room once a day, all but blessing it--showing a condescension, and=
a
patronage, and a grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-
shouldered presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known
better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy's life.
‘My Caroline,’ he would say, making
the nearest approach that he could to bending over her. ‘Tell me that=
you
are better to-day.’
‘Oh, much better, thank you, Mr Turveydr=
op,’
Caddy would reply.
‘Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss
Summerson. She is not quite prostrated by fatigue?’ Here he would cre=
ase
up his eyelids and kiss his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had
ceased to be particular in his attentions since I had been so altered.
‘Not at all,’ I would assure him.<= o:p>
‘Charming! We must take care of our dear
Caroline, Miss Summerson. We must spare nothing that will restore her. We m=
ust
nourish her. My dear Caroline’--he would turn to his daughter-in-law =
with
infinite generosity and protection--’want for nothing, my love. Frame=
a
wish and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains, everythin=
g my
room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not,’ he would sometim=
es
add in a burst of deportment, ‘even allow my simple requirements to be
considered if they should at any time interfere with your own, my Caroline.
Your necessities are greater than mine.’
He had established such a long prescriptive ri=
ght
to this deportment (his son's inheritance from his mother) that I several t=
imes
knew both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these affectionate
self-sacrifices.
‘Nay, my dears,’ he would remonstr=
ate;
and when I saw Caddy's thin arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be
melted too, though not by the same process. ‘Nay, nay! I have promised
never to leave ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no oth=
er
return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park.’
He would take the air there presently and get =
an
appetite for his hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr Turveydrop no wrong, but I
never saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except t=
hat
he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the child out walk=
ing
with great pomp, always on those occasions sending him home before he went =
to
dinner himself, and occasionally with a halfpenny in his pocket. But even t=
his
disinterestedness was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge,
for before Peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the
professor of deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy
and her husband, from top to toe.
Last of our visitors, there was Mr Jellyby. Re=
ally
when he used to come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how =
she
was, and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt =
to
say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling about doi=
ng
any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as if with an intent=
ion
of helping by a great exertion; but he never got any further. His sole
occupation was to sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the
thoughtful baby; and I could not quite divest my mind of a fancy that they
understood one another.
I have not counted Mr Woodcourt among our visi=
tors
because he was now Caddy's regular attendant. She soon began to improve und=
er
his care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he t=
ook
that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal of Mr Woodco=
urt
during this time, though not so much as might be supposed, for knowing Cadd=
y to
be safe in his hands, I often slipped home at about the hours when he was
expected. We frequently met, notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to mys=
elf
now, but I still felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still =
WAS
sorry for me I believed. He helped Mr Badger in his professional engagement=
s,
which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects for the future.
It was when Caddy began to recover that I bega=
n to
notice a change in my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself=
to
me, because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing in
themselves and only became something when they were pieced together. But I =
made
it out, by putting them together, that Ada was not so frankly cheerful with=
me
as she used to be. Her tenderness for me was as loving and true as ever; I =
did
not for a moment doubt that; but there was a quiet sorrow about her which s=
he
did not confide to me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.
Now, I could not understand this, and I was so
anxious for the happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness a=
nd
set me thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this
something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my head =
that
she was a little grieved--for me--by what I had told her about Bleak House.=
How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I
don't know. I had no idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing =
so.
I was not grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still,
that Ada might be thinking--for me, though I had abandoned all such
thoughts--of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy to beli=
eve
that I believed it.
What could I do to reassure my darling (I
considered then) and show her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could on=
ly
be as brisk and busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along.
However, as Caddy's illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my
home duties--though I had always been there in the morning to make my
guardian's breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said there mus=
t be
two little women, for his little woman was never missing--I resolved to be
doubly diligent and gay. So I went about the house humming all the tunes I
knew, and I sat working and working in a desperate manner, and I talked and
talked, morning, noon, and night.
And still there was the same shade between me =
and
my darling.
‘So, Dame Trot,’ observed my guard=
ian,
shutting up his book one night when we were all three together, ‘so
Woodcourt has restored Caddy Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?=
8217;
‘Yes,’ I said; ‘and to be re=
paid
by such gratitude as hers is to be made rich, guardian.’
‘I wish it was,’ he returned, R=
16;with
all my heart.’
So did I too, for that matter. I said so.
‘Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew=
if
we knew how. Would we not, little woman?’
I laughed as I worked and replied that I was n=
ot
sure about that, for it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and
there might be many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herse=
lf,
and many others.
‘True,’ said my guardian. ‘I=
had
forgotten that. But we would agree to make him rich enough to live, I suppo=
se?
Rich enough to work with tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his o=
wn
happy home and his own household gods--and household goddess, too, perhaps?=
’
That was quite another thing, I said. We must =
all
agree in that.
‘To be sure,’ said my guardian. =
8216;All
of us. I have a great regard for Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I ha=
ve
been sounding him delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid =
to
an independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And yet=
I
would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems half inclined =
for
another voyage. But that appears like casting such a man away.’
‘It might open a new world to him,’
said I.
‘So it might, little woman,’ my
guardian assented. ‘I doubt if he expects much of the old world. Do y=
ou
know I have fancied that he sometimes feels some particular disappointment =
or
misfortune encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?R=
17;
I shook my head.
‘Humph,’ said my guardian. ‘=
I am
mistaken, I dare say.’ As there was a little pause here, which I thou=
ght,
for my dear girl's satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air a=
s I
worked which was a favourite with my guardian.
‘And do you think Mr Woodcourt will make
another voyage?’ I asked him when I had hummed it quietly all through=
.
‘I don't quite know what to think, my de=
ar,
but I should say it was likely at present that he will give a long trip to
another country.’
‘I am sure he will take the best wishes =
of
all our hearts with him wherever he goes,’ said I; ‘and though =
they
are not riches, he will never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least.=
8217;
‘Never, little woman,’ he replied.=
I was sitting in my usual place, which was now
beside my guardian's chair. That had not been my usual place before the let=
ter,
but it was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as=
she
looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears were fall=
ing
down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to
undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I =
had
nothing to do but to be myself.
So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder-=
-how
little thinking what was heavy on her mind!--and I said she was not quite w=
ell,
and put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own ro=
om,
and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so unprepared to hear, I
gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I never thought she stood in ne=
ed
of it.
‘Oh, my dear good Esther,’ said Ad=
a, ‘if
I could only make up my mind to speak to you and my cousin John when you are
together!’
‘Why, my love!’ I remonstrated. =
8216;Ada,
why should you not speak to us!’
Ada only dropped her head and pressed me close=
r to
her heart.
‘You surely don't forget, my beauty,R=
17;
said I, smiling, ‘what quiet, old-fashioned people we are and how I h=
ave
settled down to be the discreetest of dames? You don't forget how happily a=
nd
peacefully my life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that=
you
don't forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be.’
‘No, never, Esther.’
‘Why then, my dear,’ said I, ̵=
6;there
can be nothing amiss--and why should you not speak to us?’
‘Nothing amiss, Esther?’ returned =
Ada.
‘Oh, when I think of all these years, and of his fatherly care and
kindness, and of the old relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, w=
hat
shall I do!’
I looked at my child in some wonder, but I tho=
ught
it better not to answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off
into many little recollections of our life together and prevented her from
saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned to my
guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat near her fo=
r a
little while.
She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at h=
er
that she was a little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I co=
uld
not decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was chan=
ged,
but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked different to me. My
guardian's old hopes of her and Richard arose sorrowfully in my mind, and I
said to myself, ‘She has been anxious about him,’ and I wondered
how that love would end.
When I had come home from Caddy's while she was
ill, I had often found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, a=
nd I
had never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her, which=
was
not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still rather wondered wh=
at
the work could he, for it was evidently nothing for herself.
And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay
with one hand under her pillow so that it was hidden.
How much less amiable I must have been than th=
ey
thought me, how much less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupi=
ed
with my own cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested wi=
th
me to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!
But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief.=
And
I awoke in it next day to find that there was still the same shade between =
me
and my darling.
When Mr Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, =
that
very same day, to Mr Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the
moment when I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot =
his
promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred trust, and =
he
was ever true to it in that spirit.
He found Mr Vholes in his office and informed =
Mr
Vholes of his agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his
address.
‘Just so, sir,’ said Mr Vholes. =
8216;Mr
C.'s address is not a hundred miles from here, sir, Mr C.'s address is not a
hundred miles from here. Would you take a seat, sir?’
Mr Woodcourt thanked Mr Vholes, but he had no =
business
with him beyond what he had mentioned.
‘Just so, sir. I believe, sir,’ sa=
id Mr
Vholes, still quietly insisting on the seat by not giving the address, R=
16;that
you have influence with Mr C. Indeed I am aware that you have.’
‘I was not aware of it myself,’
returned Mr Woodcourt; ‘but I suppose you know best.’
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mr Vholes,
self-contained as usual, voice and all, ‘it is a part of my professio=
nal
duty to know best. It is a part of my professional duty to study and to
understand a gentleman who confides his interests to me. In my professional
duty I shall not be wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best
intentions, be wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir.=
’
Mr Woodcourt again mentioned the address.
‘Give me leave, sir,’ said Mr Vhol=
es. ‘Bear
with me for a moment. Sir, Mr C. is playing for a considerable stake, and
cannot play without--need I say what?’
‘Money, I presume?’
‘Sir,’ said Mr Vholes, ‘to be
honest with you (honesty being my golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose,
and I find that I generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the
chances of Mr C.'s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be
highly impolitic in Mr C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off;=
it
might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir,’ said Mr Vholes, bringi=
ng
his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner, ‘nothing.̵=
7;
‘You seem to forget,’ returned Mr
Woodcourt, ‘that I ask you to say nothing and have no interest in
anything you say.’
‘Pardon me, sir!’ retorted Mr Vhol=
es. ‘You
do yourself an injustice. No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not--shall not in my
office, if I know it--do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anyth=
ing,
and in everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much
better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your appearan=
ce
is not interested in whatever concerns his friend.’
‘Well,’ replied Mr Woodcourt, R=
16;that
may be. I am particularly interested in his address.’
‘The number, sir,’ said Mr Vholes =
parenthetically,
‘I believe I have already mentioned. If Mr C. is to continue to play =
for
this considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are
funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. But f=
or
the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr C. is to throw away
what he has already ventured, which is wholly and solely a point for his
consideration. This, sir, I take the opportunity of stating openly to you as
the friend of Mr C. Without funds I shall always be happy to appear and act=
for
Mr C. to the extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the
estate, not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging s=
ome
one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable father, who is
entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or some one. Whereas, sir=
, my
resolution is (call it weakness or folly if you please) to wrong no one.=
217;
Mr Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he w=
as
glad to hear it.
‘I wish, sir,’ said Mr Vholes, =
216;to
leave a good name behind me. Therefore I take every opportunity of openly
stating to a friend of Mr C. how Mr C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the
labourer is worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wh=
eel,
I do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is pain=
ted
on the door outside, with that object.’
‘And Mr Carstone's address, Mr Vholes?=
8217;
‘Sir,’ returned Mr Vholes, ‘=
as I
believe I have already mentioned, it is next door. On the second story you =
will
find Mr C.'s apartments. Mr C. desires to be near his professional adviser,=
and
I am far from objecting, for I court inquiry.’
Upon this Mr Woodcourt wished Mr Vholes good d=
ay
and went in search of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to
understand now but too well.
He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished,
much as I had found him in his barrack-room but a little while before, exce=
pt
that he was not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which =
his
eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing open,=
Mr
Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without being perceived, and=
he
told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face and the
dejection of his manner before he was aroused from his dream.
‘Woodcourt, my dear fellow,’ cried
Richard, starting up with extended hands, ‘you come upon my vision li=
ke a
ghost.’
‘A friendly one,’ he replied, R=
16;and
only waiting, as they say ghosts do, to be addressed. How does the mortal w=
orld
go?’ They were seated now, near together.
‘Badly enough, and slowly enough,’
said Richard, ‘speaking at least for my part of it.’
‘What part is that?’
‘The Chancery part.’
‘I never heard,’ returned Mr
Woodcourt, shaking his head, ‘of its going well yet.’
‘Nor I,’ said Richard moodily. =
216;Who
ever did?’ He brightened again in a moment and said with his natural
openness, ‘Woodcourt, I should be sorry to be misunderstood by you, e=
ven
if I gained by it in your estimation. You must know that I have done no good
this long time. I have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been
capable of nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping
out of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not, though=
I
dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, a very different
opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid I have wanted an object;
but I have an object now--or it has me--and it is too late to discuss it. T=
ake
me as I am, and make the best of me.’
‘A bargain,’ said Mr Woodcourt. =
8216;Do
as much by me in return.’
‘Oh! You,’ returned Richard, ̵=
6;you
can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand upon the plough=
and
never turn, and can strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very
different creatures.’
He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment i=
nto
his weary condition.
‘Well, well!’ he cried, shaking it
off. ‘Everything has an end. We shall see! So you will take me as I a=
m,
and make the best of me?’
‘Aye! Indeed I will.’ They shook h=
ands
upon it laughingly, but in deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them w=
ith
my heart of hearts.
‘You come as a godsend,’ said Rich=
ard,
‘for I have seen nobody here yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one
subject I should like to mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of=
our
treaty. You can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say,
that I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?’
Mr Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much=
to
him. ‘Now pray,’ returned Richard, ‘don't think me a heap=
of
selfishness. Don't suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my
heart over this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alo=
ne.
Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works for bot=
h of
us. Do think of that!’
He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr
Woodcourt gave him the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
‘You see,’ said Richard, with
something pathetic in his manner of lingering on the point, though it was
off-hand and unstudied, ‘to an upright fellow like you, bringing a
friendly face like yours here, I cannot bear the thought of appearing selfi=
sh
and mean. I want to see Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want t=
o do
my utmost to right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape toge=
ther
to extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!̵=
7;
Afterwards, when Mr Woodcourt came to reflect =
on
what had passed, he was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's
anxiety on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to
Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had had bef=
ore
that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by Mr Vholes and that
Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this. It was just as I
began to take care of Caddy that the interview took place, and I now return=
to
the time when Caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my
darling.
I proposed to Ada that morning that we should =
go
and see Richard. It a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was
not so radiantly willing as I had expected.
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘you have=
not
had any difference with Richard since I have been so much away?’
‘No, Esther.’
‘Not heard of him, perhaps?’ said =
I.
‘Yes, I have heard of him,’ said A=
da.
Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her f=
ace.
I could not make my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said.
No, Ada thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, A=
da
thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go now. We=
ll,
I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love =
in
her face!
We were soon equipped and went out. It was a
sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those
colourless days when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at
us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromi=
se
about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl quite o=
ut
of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were more funerals pass=
ing
along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen before.
We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were
going to inquire in a shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery L=
ane.
‘We are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction=
,’
said I. So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it writ=
ten
up. Symond's Inn.
We had next to find out the number. ‘Or =
Mr
Vholes's office will do,’ I recollected, ‘for Mr Vholes's offic=
e is
next door.’ Upon which Ada said, perhaps that was Mr Vholes's office =
in
the corner there. And it really was.
Then came the question, which of the two next
doors? I was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and=
my
darling was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to
Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we=
had
better turn the handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a ta=
ble
covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors
reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous words that ran=
in
it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
He received us very affectionately, and we sat
down. ‘If you had come a little earlier,’ he said, ‘you w=
ould
have found Woodcourt here. There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt =
is.
He finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his wo=
rk
to do would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery, =
so fresh,
so sensible, so earnest, so--everything that I am not, that the place brigh=
tens
whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again.’
‘God bless him,’ I thought, ‘=
;for
his truth to me!’
‘He is not so sanguine, Ada,’
continued Richard, casting his dejected look over the bundles of papers, =
8216;as
Vholes and I are usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the
mysteries. We have gone into them, and he has not. He can't be expected to =
know
much of such a labyrinth.’
As his look wandered over the papers again and=
he
passed his two hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his =
eyes
appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all bitten a=
way.
‘Is this a healthy place to live in,
Richard, do you think?’ said I.
‘Why, my dear Minerva,’ answered
Richard with his old gay laugh, ‘it is neither a rural nor a cheerful
place; and when the sun shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that =
it
is shining brightly in an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's
near the offices and near Vholes.’
‘Perhaps,’ I hinted, ‘a chan=
ge
from both--’
‘Might do me good?’ said Richard,
forcing a laugh as he finished the sentence. ‘I shouldn't wonder! But=
it
can only come in one way now--in one of two ways, I should rather say. Eith=
er the
suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear
girl, the suit, my dear girl!’
These latter words were addressed to Ada, who =
was
sitting nearest to him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him,=
I
could not see it.
‘We are doing very well,’ pursued
Richard. ‘Vholes will tell you so. We are really spinning along. Ask
Vholes. We are giving them no rest. Vholes knows all their windings and
turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. We have astonished them already.=
We shall
rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!’
His hopefulness had long been more painful to =
me
than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce=
in
its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of
being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched me to the heart. But
the commentary upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face made it f=
ar
more distressing than it used to be. I say indelibly, for I felt persuaded =
that
if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his
brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety,
self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained
upon his features to the hour of his death.
‘The sight of our dear little woman,R=
17;
said Richard, Ada still remaining silent and quiet, ‘is so natural to=
me,
and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days--’
Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
‘--So exactly like the face of old days,=
’
said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly re=
gard
which nothing ever changed, ‘that I can't make pretences with her. I
fluctuate a little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and someti=
mes
I--don't quite despair, but nearly. I get,’ said Richard, relinquishi=
ng
my hand gently and walking across the room, ‘so tired!’
He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon =
the
sofa. ‘I get,’ he repeated gloomily, ‘so tired. It is such
weary, weary work!’
He was leaning on his arm saying these words i=
n a
meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her
bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight =
on
his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. O=
h,
what a loving and devoted face I saw!
‘Esther, dear,’ she said very quie=
tly,
‘I am not going home again.’
A light shone in upon me all at once.
‘Never any more. I am going to stay with=
my
dear husband. We have been married above two months. Go home without me, my=
own
Esther; I shall never go home any more!’ With those words my darling =
drew
his head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I saw=
a
love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me.
‘Speak to Esther, my dearest,’ said
Richard, breaking the silence presently. ‘Tell her how it was.’=
I met her before she could come to me and fold=
ed
her in my arms. We neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I
wanted to hear nothing. ‘My pet,’ said I. ‘My love. My po=
or,
poor girl!’ I pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the
impulse that I had upon me was to pity her so much.
‘Esther, will you forgive me? Will my co=
usin
John forgive me?’
‘My dear,’ said I, ‘to doubt=
it
for a moment is to do him a great wrong. And as to me!’ Why, as to me,
what had I to forgive!
I dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat besi=
de
her on the sofa, and Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded=
of
that so different night when they had first taken me into their confidence =
and
had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it w=
as.
‘All I had was Richard's,’ Ada sai=
d; ‘and
Richard would not take it, Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when=
I
loved him dearly!’
‘And you were so fully and so kindly
occupied, excellent Dame Durden,’ said Richard, ‘that how could=
we
speak to you at such a time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step=
. We
went out one morning and were married.’
‘And when it was done, Esther,’ sa=
id
my darling, ‘I was always thinking how to tell you and what to do for=
the
best. And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I
thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I cou=
ld
not tell what to do, and I fretted very much.’
How selfish I must have been not to have thoug=
ht
of this before! I don't know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was=
so
fond of them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much, =
and
yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never had experie=
nced
such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and in my own heart I did=
not
know which predominated. But I was not there to darken their way; I did not=
do
that.
When I was less foolish and more composed, my
darling took her wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on.
Then I remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage =
she
had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada blushingly aske=
d me
how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how I had seen her hand conce=
aled
under her pillow and had little thought why, my dear. Then they began telli=
ng
me how it was all over again, and I began to be sorry and glad again, and
foolish again, and to hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I shou=
ld
put them out of heart.
Thus the time went on until it became necessary
for me to think of returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of al=
l,
for then my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling=
me
by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do without=
me!
Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have been the worst of=
the
three if I had not severely said to myself, ‘Now Esther, if you do, I=
'll
never speak to you again!’
‘Why, I declare,’ said I, ‘I
never saw such a wife. I don't think she loves her husband at all. Here,
Richard, take my child, for goodness' sake.’ But I held her tight all=
the
while, and could have wept over her I don't know how long.
‘I give this dear young couple notice,=
8217;
said I, ‘that I am only going away to come back to-morrow and that I
shall be always coming backwards and forwards until Symond's Inn is tired of
the sight of me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the
use of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!’
I had given my darling to him now, and I meant=
to
go; but I lingered for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to
rive my heart to turn from.
So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that
unless they gave me some encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I
could take that liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling
through her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave =
it
one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away.
And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It
almost seemed to me that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so
blank without her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of
seeing her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walke=
d up
and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying.
I came to myself by and by, after a little
scolding, and took a coach home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans
had reappeared a short time before and was lying at the point of death; ind=
eed,
was then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to inquire
about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I cried a little
again, though on the whole I don't think I behaved so very, very ill.
It was only natural that I should not be quite
accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a lo=
ng
time after years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in w=
hich
I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one,
and I so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that I
determined to go back in the evening only to look up at her windows.
It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then
seem at all so to me, and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley
into my confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the
new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the yellow
blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking up, and narr=
owly
missed encountering Mr Vholes, who came out of his office while we were the=
re
and turned his head to look up too before going home. The sight of his lank
black figure and the lonesome air of that nook in the dark were favourable =
to
the state of my mind. I thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear
girl, shut up in such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel
place.
It was very solitary and very dull, and I did =
not
doubt that I might safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up =
with
a light foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on t=
he
way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence of the
house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young voices. I put my
lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss for my dear and came
quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the
visit.
And it really did me good, for though nobody b=
ut
Charley and I knew anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished
the separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for tho=
se
moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, but all the
better for that hovering about my darling.
My guardian had come home and was standing
thoughtfully by the dark window. When I went in, his face cleared and he ca=
me
to his seat, but he caught the light upon my face as I took mine.
‘Little woman,’ said he, ‘You
have been crying.’
‘Why, yes, guardian,’ said I, R=
16;I
am afraid I have been, a little. Ada has been in such distress, and is so v=
ery
sorry, guardian.’
I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I s=
aw
in his glance that my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him=
.
‘Is she married, my dear?’
I told him all about it and how her first
entreaties had referred to his forgiveness.
‘She has no need of it,’ said he. =
‘Heaven
bless her and her husband!’ But just as my first impulse had been to =
pity
her, so was his. ‘Poor girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!’
Neither of us spoke after that, until he said =
with
a sigh, ‘Well, well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast.’
‘But its mistress remains, guardian.R=
17;
Though I was timid about saying it, I ventured because of the sorrowful ton=
e in
which he had spoken. ‘She will do all she can to make it happy,’
said I.
‘She will succeed, my love!’
The letter had made no difference between us
except that the seat by his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He
turned his old bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his
old way, and said again, ‘She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bl=
eak
House is thinning fast, O little woman!’
I was sorry presently that this was all we said
about that. I was rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been=
all
I had meant to be since the letter and the answer.
But one other day had intervened when, early in
the morning as we were going to breakfast, Mr Woodcourt came in haste with =
the
astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which Mr Geor=
ge
had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us that a large reward
was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the murderer's apprehension, I did=
not
in my first consternation understand why; but a few more words explained to=
me
that the murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my
mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance.
This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom
she had long watched and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted
her, one for whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always drea=
ding
in him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first though=
ts
were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be able to feel no p=
ity!
How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had sometimes even wished the o=
ld man
away who was so swiftly hurried out of life!
Such crowding reflections, increasing the dist=
ress
and fear I always felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated tha=
t I
could scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the=
conversation
until I had had a little time to recover. But when I came to myself and saw=
how
shocked my guardian was and found that they were earnestly speaking of the
suspected man and recalling every favourable impression we had formed of him
out of the good we had known of him, my interest and my fears were so stron=
gly
aroused in his behalf that I was quite set up again.
‘Guardian, you don't think it possible t=
hat
he is justly accused?’
‘My dear, I CAN'T think so. This man who=
m we
have seen so open- hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant=
has
the gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and is=
so
simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a crime? I can't
believe it. It's not that I don't or I won't. I can't!’
‘And I can't,’ said Mr Woodcourt. =
‘Still,
whatever we believe or know of him, we had better not forget that some
appearances are against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased
gentleman. He has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have
expressed himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to=
my
knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder within a =
few
minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be as innocent of any
participation in it as I am, but these are all reasons for suspicion falling
upon him.’
‘True,’ said my guardian. And he
added, turning to me, ‘It would be doing him a very bad service, my d=
ear,
to shut our eyes to the truth in any of these respects.’
I felt, of course, that we must admit, not onl=
y to
ourselves but to others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Y=
et I
knew withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce us=
to
desert him in his need.
‘Heaven forbid!’ returned my guard=
ian.
‘We will stand by him, as he himself stood by the two poor creatures =
who
are gone.’ He meant Mr Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr George=
had
given shelter.
Mr Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's m=
an
had been with him before day, after wandering about the streets all night l=
ike
a distracted creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was that we
should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his messenger to represe=
nt
his perfect innocence with every solemn assurance he could send us. That Mr
Woodcourt had only quieted the man by undertaking to come to our house very
early in the morning with these representations. He added that he was now u=
pon
his way to see the prisoner himself.
My guardian said directly he would go too. Now,
besides that I liked the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I =
had
that secret interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardi=
an.
I felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become personally
important to myself that the truth should be discovered and that no innocent
people should be suspected, for suspicion, once run wild, might run wilder.=
In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and
obligation to go with them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I
went.
It was a large prison with many courts and
passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a=
new
comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, =
shut
up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had--as I have
read--for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, l=
ike
a cellar upstairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive
iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they w=
ere,
we found the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench t=
here
and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.
When he saw us, he came forward a step with his
usual heavy tread, and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still
advanced, putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.
‘This is a load off my mind, I do assure
you, miss and gentlemen,’ said he, saluting us with great heartiness =
and
drawing a long breath. ‘And now I don't so much care how it ends.R=
17;
He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What wi=
th
his coolness and his soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison
guard.
‘This is even a rougher place than my
gallery to receive a lady in,’ said Mr George, ‘but I know Miss
Summerson will make the best of it.’ As he handed me to the bench on
which he had been sitting, I sat down, which seemed to give him great
satisfaction.
‘I thank you, miss,’ said he.
‘Now, George,’ observed my guardia=
n, ‘as
we require no new assurances on your part, so I believe we need give you no=
ne
on ours.’
‘Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my
heart. If I was not innocent of this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep=
my
secret to myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the
present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I feel it, =
Miss
Summerson and gentlemen, deeply.’
He laid his hand for a moment on his broad che=
st
and bent his head to us. Although he squared himself again directly, he
expressed a great amount of natural emotion by these simple means.
‘First,’ said my guardian, ‘=
can
we do anything for your personal comfort, George?’
‘For which, sir?’ he inquired,
clearing his throat.
‘For your personal comfort. Is there
anything you want that would lessen the hardship of this confinement?’=
;
‘Well, sir,’ replied George, after=
a
little cogitation, ‘I am equally obliged to you, but tobacco being
against the rules, I can't say that there is.’
‘You will think of many little things
perhaps, by and by. Whenever you do, George, let us know.’
‘Thank you, sir. Howsoever,’ obser=
ved Mr
George with one of his sunburnt smiles, ‘a man who has been knocking
about the world in a vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well
enough in a place like the present, so far as that goes.’
‘Next, as to your case,’ observed =
my
guardian.
‘Exactly so, sir,’ returned Mr Geo=
rge,
folding his arms upon his breast with perfect self-possession and a little
curiosity.
‘How does it stand now?’
‘Why, sir, it is under remand at present.
Bucket gives me to understand that he will probably apply for a series of
remands from time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be =
made
more complete I don't myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage it some=
how.’
‘Why, heaven save us, man,’ exclai=
med
my guardian, surprised into his old oddity and vehemence, ‘you talk of
yourself as if you were somebody else!’
‘No offence, sir,’ said Mr George.=
‘I
am very sensible of your kindness. But I don't see how an innocent man is to
make up his mind to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the
walls unless he takes it in that point of view.’
‘That is true enough to a certain extent=
,’
returned my guardian, softened. ‘But my good fellow, even an innocent=
man
must take ordinary precautions to defend himself.’
‘Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I h=
ave
stated to the magistrates, 'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as
yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is perfectly
true; I know no more about it.' I intend to continue stating that, sir. What
more can I do? It's the truth.’
‘But the mere truth won't do,’
rejoined my guardian.
‘Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look=
-out
for me!’ Mr George good-humouredly observed.
‘You must have a lawyer,’ pursued =
my
guardian. ‘We must engage a good one for you.’
‘I ask your pardon, sir,’ said Mr
George with a step backward. ‘I am equally obliged. But I must decide=
dly
beg to be excused from anything of that sort.’
‘You won't have a lawyer?’
‘No, sir.’ Mr George shook his hea=
d in
the most emphatic manner. ‘I thank you all the same, sir, but--no law=
yer!’
‘Why not?’
‘I don't take kindly to the breed,’
said Mr George. ‘Gridley didn't. And--if you'll excuse my saying so
much--I should hardly have thought you did yourself, sir.’
‘That's equity,’ my guardian
explained, a little at a loss; ‘that's equity, George.’
‘Is it, indeed, sir?’ returned the
trooper in his off-hand manner. ‘I am not acquainted with those shade=
s of
names myself, but in a general way I object to the breed.’
Unfolding his arms and changing his position, =
he
stood with one massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as
complete a picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as
ever I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured =
to
persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well with his
bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our representations that=
his
place of confinement was.
‘Pray think, once more, Mr George,’
said I. ‘Have you no wish in reference to your case?’
‘I certainly could wish it to be tried,
miss,’ he returned, ‘by court-martial; but that is out of the
question, as I am well aware. If you will be so good as to favour me with y=
our
attention for a couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain
myself as clearly as I can.’
He looked at us all three in turn, shook his h=
ead
a little as if he were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight unif=
orm,
and after a moment's reflection went on.
‘You see, miss, I have been handcuffed a=
nd
taken into custody and brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and h=
ere
I am. My shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such proper=
ty
as I have--'tis small--is turned this way and that till it don't know itsel=
f;
and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of that. Though I=
am
in these present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I=
can
very well understand that if I hadn't gone into the vagabond way in my yout=
h,
this wouldn't have happened. It
He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment wi=
th a
good-humoured look and said apologetically, ‘I am such a short-winded
talker that I must think a bit.’ Having thought a bit, he looked up a=
gain
and resumed.
‘How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate
deceased was himself a lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wi=
sh
to rake up his ashes, but he had, what I should call if he was living, a de=
vil
of a tight hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that. If I had
kept clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's =
not
what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had discharged
into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off that Bucket has f=
ound
at my place, and dear me, might have found there any day since it has been =
my
place. What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a
lawyer.’
He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and
bolts and did not resume until the door had been opened and was shut again.=
For
what purpose opened, I will mention presently.
‘I should have got a lawyer, and he would
have said (as I have often read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing=
, my
client reserves his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis=
not
the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to thi=
nk
that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He would be as lik=
ely
to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not?
Act as if I was-- shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep
circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhap=
s!
But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rath=
er
be hanged in my own way--if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so
disagreeable to a lady?’
He had warmed into his subject now, and was un=
der
no further necessity to wait a bit.
‘I would rather be hanged in my own way.=
And
I mean to be! I don't intend to say,’ looking round upon us with his
powerful arms akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, ‘that I am more
partial to being hanged than another man. What I say is, I must come off cl=
ear
and full or not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is tr=
ue,
I say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be used,' I =
tell
them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they can't make me innocent
out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, =
or
anything else. And if they are, it's worth nothing to me.’
Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he =
came
back to the table and finished what he had to say.
‘I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, m=
any
times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. That's the
plain state of the matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a
blunt broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my d=
uty
as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as=
I
have sown. When I got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer--it
don't take a rover who has knocked about so much as myself so very long to
recover from a crash--I worked my way round to what you find me now. As suc=
h I
shall remain. No relations will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me,
and--and that's all I've got to say.’
The door had been opened to admit another
soldier-looking man of less prepossessing appearance at first sight and a
weather-tanned, bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her
entrance, had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr George had said. Mr Geor=
ge
had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any =
more
particular greeting in the midst of his address. He now shook them cordiall=
y by
the hand and said, ‘Miss Summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comr=
ade of
mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this is his wife, Mrs Bagnet.’
Mr Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs
Bagnet dropped us a curtsy.
‘Real good friends of mine, they are,=
217;
sald Mr George. ‘It was at their house I was taken.’
‘With a second-hand wiolinceller,’=
Mr
Bagnet put in, twitching his head angrily. ‘Of a good tone. For a fri=
end.
That money was no object to.’
‘Mat,’ said Mr George, ‘you =
have
heard pretty well all I have been saying to this lady and these two gentlem=
en.
I know it meets your approval?’
Mr Bagnet, after considering, referred the poi=
nt
to his wife. ‘Old girl,’ said he. ‘Tell him. Whether or n=
ot.
It meets my approval.’
‘Why, George,’ exclaimed Mrs Bagne=
t,
who had been unpacking her basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickl=
ed
pork, a little tea and sugar, and a brown loaf, ‘you ought to know it
don't. You ought to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You
won't be got off this way, and you won't be got off that way--what do you m=
ean
by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George.’
‘Don't be severe upon me in my misfortun=
es, Mrs
Bagnet,’ said the trooper lightly.
‘Oh! Bother your misfortunes,’ cri=
ed Mrs
Bagnet, ‘if they don't make you more reasonable than that comes to. I
never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to =
hear
you talk this day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many c=
ooks
should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman recommended =
them
to you.’
‘This is a very sensible woman,’ s=
aid
my guardian. ‘I hope you will persuade him, Mrs Bagnet.’
‘Persuade him, sir?’ she returned.=
‘Lord
bless you, no. You don't know George. Now, there!’ Mrs Bagnet left her
basket to point him out with both her bare brown hands. ‘There he sta=
nds!
As self-willed and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a hum=
an
creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and should=
er
an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that man when he has
got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why, don't I know him!’
cried Mrs Bagnet. ‘Don't I know you, George! You don't mean to set up=
for
a new character with ME after all these years, I hope?’
Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effe=
ct
upon her husband, who shook his head at the trooper several times as a sile=
nt
recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs Bagnet looked at me; an=
d I
understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to do something, th=
ough
I did not comprehend what.
‘But I have given up talking to you, old
fellow, years and years,’ said Mrs Bagnet as she blew a little dust o=
ff
the pickled pork, looking at me again; ‘and when ladies and gentlemen
know you as well as I do, they'll give up talking to you too. If you are not
too headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is.’
‘I accept it with many thanks,’
returned the trooper.
‘Do you though, indeed?’ said Mrs
Bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-humouredly. ‘I'm sure I'm surpr=
ised
at that. I wonder you don't starve in your own way also. It would only be l=
ike
you. Perhaps you'll set your mind upon THAT next.’ Here she again loo=
ked
at me, and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,
that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside the pris=
on.
Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and Mr Woodcourt, I rose=
.
‘We hope you will think better of it, Mr
George,’ said I, ‘and we shall come to see you again, trusting =
to
find you more reasonable.’
‘More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't
find me,’ he returned.
‘But more persuadable we can, I hope,=
217;
said I. ‘And let me entreat you to consider that the clearing up of t=
his
mystery and the discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the
last importance to others besides yourself.’
He heard me respectfully but without much heed=
ing
these words, which I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to t=
he
door; he was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,
which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
‘'Tis curious,’ said he. ‘And
yet I thought so at the time!’
My guardian asked him what he meant.
‘Why, sir,’ he answered, ‘wh=
en
my ill fortune took me to the dead man's staircase on the night of his murd=
er,
I saw a shape so like Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark that I had half=
a
mind to speak to it.’
For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never
felt before or since and hope I shall never feel again.
‘It came downstairs as I went up,’
said the trooper, ‘and crossed the moonlighted window with a loose bl=
ack
mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with
the present subject, excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the
moment that it came into my head.’
I cannot separate and define the feelings that
arose in me after this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I h=
ad
felt upon me from the first of following the investigation was, without my
distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I was
indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my being afr=
aid.
We three went out of the prison and walked up = and down at some short distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We= had not waited long when Mr and Mrs Bagnet came out too and quickly joined us.<= o:p>
There was a tear in each of Mrs Bagnet's eyes,=
and
her face was flushed and hurried. ‘I didn't let George see what I tho=
ught
about it, you know, miss,’ was her first remark when she came up, =
216;but
he's in a bad way, poor old fellow!’
‘Not with care and prudence and good hel=
p,’
said my guardian.
‘A gentleman like you ought to know best,
sir,’ returned Mrs Bagnet, hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her
grey cloak, ‘but I am uneasy for him. He has been so careless and sai=
d so
much that he never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand =
him
as Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have happened =
bad
for him, and such a number of people will be brought forward to speak again=
st
him, and Bucket is so deep.’
‘With a second-hand wiolinceller. And sa=
id
he played the fife. When a boy,’ Mr Bagnet added with great solemnity=
.
‘Now, I tell you, miss,’ said Mrs
Bagnet; ‘and when I say miss, I mean all! Just come into the corner of
the wall and I'll tell you!’
Mrs Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded pla=
ce
and was at first too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr Bagnet to say, &=
#8216;Old
girl! Tell 'em!’
‘Why, then, miss,’ the old girl
proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet for more air, ‘you could=
as
soon move Dover Castle as move George on this point unless you had got a new
power to move him with. And I have got it!’ ‘You are a jewel of=
a
woman,’ said my guardian. ‘Go on!’
‘Now, I tell you, miss,’ she
proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and agitation a dozen times in e=
very
sentence, ‘that what he says concerning no relations is all bosh. They
don't know of him, but he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd
times than to anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to=
my
Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. For fifty pounds he =
had
seen his mother that day. She's alive and must be brought here straight!=
217;
Instantly Mrs Bagnet put some pins into her mo= uth and began pinning up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of= her grey cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.<= o:p>
‘Lignum,’ said Mrs Bagnet, ‘=
you
take care of the children, old man, and give me the umbrella! I'm away to
Lincolnshire to bring that old lady here.’
‘But, bless the woman,’ cried my
guardian with his hand in his pocket, ‘how is she going? What money h=
as
she got?’
Mrs Bagnet made another application to her ski=
rts
and brought forth a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few
shillings and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
‘Never you mind for me, miss. I'm a
soldier's wife and accustomed to travel my own way. Lignum, old boy,’
kissing him, ‘one for yourself, three for the children. Now I'm away =
into
Lincolnshire after George's mother!’
And she actually set off while we three stood
looking at one another lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her =
grey
cloak at a sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
‘Mr Bagnet,’ said my guardian. =
216;Do
you mean to let her go in that way?’
‘Can't help it,’ he returned. R=
16;Made
her way home once from another quarter of the world. With the same grey clo=
ak.
And same umbrella. Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old =
girl
says, I'LL do it. She does it.’
‘Then she is as honest and genuine as she
looks,’ rejoined my guardian, ‘and it is impossible to say more=
for
her.’
‘She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil
battalion,’ said Mr Bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder as he went
his way also. ‘And there's not such another. But I never own to it be=
fore
her. Discipline must be maintained.’
Mr Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in
consultation together under existing circumstances. When Mr Bucket has a ma=
tter
of this pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems=
to
rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it
whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy=
; he
rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a gui=
lty
man, and it charms him to his destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temp=
le
invariably predict that when Mr Bucket and that finger are in much conferen=
ce,
a terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of
human nature, on the whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe
upon the follies of mankind, Mr Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and
strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather languish=
ing
for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition towards his speci=
es
and will drink with most of them. He is free with his money, affable in his
manners, innocent in his conversation--but through the placid stream of his
life there glides an under-current of forefinger.
Time and place cannot bind Mr Bucket. Like man=
in
the abstract, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow--but, very unlike man
indeed, he is here again the next day. This evening he will be casually loo=
king
into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's house in
town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold,
where erst the old man walked whose ghost is propitiated with a hundred
guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr Bucket
examines. A few hours afterwards, he and the Roman will be alone together c=
omparing
forefingers.
It is likely that these occupations are
irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr Bucket at pre=
sent
does not go home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs
Bucket--a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved=
by
professional exercise, might have done great things, but which has paused at
the level of a clever amateur--he holds himself aloof from that dear solace=
. Mrs
Bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she
takes an interest) for companionship and conversation.
A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn Field=
s on
the day of the funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in perso=
n;
strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that is to s=
ay,
Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a
make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable carriages is immense. The peer=
age
contributes more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that ne=
ighbourhood.
Such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald=
's
College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a blow. The
Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with silver
wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and three bereaved wo=
rms,
six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of woe. All the state coachmen=
in
London seem plunged into mourning; and if that dead old man of the rusty ga=
rb
be not beyond a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be
highly gratified this day.
Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages =
and
the calves of so many legs all steeped in grief, Mr Bucket sits concealed in
one of the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through=
the
lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd--as for what not?--and looking
here and there, now from this side of the carriage, now from the other, now=
up
at the house windows, now along the people's heads, nothing escapes him.
‘And there you are, my partner, eh?̵=
7;
says Mr Bucket to himself, apostrophizing Mrs Bucket, stationed, by his fav=
our,
on the steps of the deceased's house. ‘And so you are. And so you are!
And very well indeed you are looking, Mrs Bucket!’
The procession has not started yet, but is wai=
ting
for the cause of its assemblage to be brought out. Mr Bucket, in the foremo=
st
emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice a hai=
r's
breadth open while he looks.
And it says a great deal for his attachment, a=
s a
husband, that he is still occupied with Mrs B. ‘There you are, my
partner, eh?’ he murmuringly repeats. ‘And our lodger with you.=
I'm
taking notice of you, Mrs Bucket; I hope you're all right in your health, my
dear!’
Not another word does Mr Bucket say, but sits =
with
most attentive eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought
down-- Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did they fly
with him on that sudden journey?--and until the procession moves, and Mr
Bucket's view is changed. After which he composes himself for an easy ride =
and
takes note of the fittings of the carriage in case he should ever find such
knowledge useful.
Contrast enough between Mr Tulkinghorn shut up=
in
his dark carriage and Mr Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable tr=
ack
of space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed sle=
ep
which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the narrow track=
of
blood which keeps the other in the watchful state expressed in every hair of
his head! But it is all one to both; neither is troubled about that.
Mr Bucket sits out the procession in his own e=
asy
manner and glides from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with
himself arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock's, which is at present a
sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all hours, wher=
e he
is always welcome and made much of, where he knows the whole establishment,=
and
walks in an atmosphere of mysterious greatness.
No knocking or ringing for Mr Bucket. He has
caused himself to be provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. A=
s he
is crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, ‘Here's another letter for
you, Mr Bucket, come by post,’ and gives it him.
‘Another one, eh?’ says Mr Bucket.=
If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any
lingering curiosity as to Mr Bucket's letters, that wary person is not the =
man
to gratify it. Mr Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of some m=
iles
in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same.
‘Do you happen to carry a box?’ sa=
ys Mr
Bucket.
Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.
‘Could you fetch me a pinch from anywher=
es?’
says Mr Bucket. ‘Thankee. It don't matter what it is; I'm not particu=
lar
as to the kind. Thankee!’
Having leisurely helped himself from a canister
borrowed from somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a
considerable show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then w=
ith
the other, Mr Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right so=
rt
and goes on, letter in hand.
Now although Mr Bucket walks upstairs to the
little library within the larger one with the face of a man who receives so=
me
scores of letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not
incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his pen like=
the
pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient to his grasp, and
discourages correspondence with himself in others as being too artless and
direct a way of doing delicate business. Further, he often sees damaging
letters produced in evidence and has occasion to reflect that it was a green
thing to write them. For these reasons he has very little to do with letter=
s,
either as sender or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen wi=
thin
the last twenty-four hours.
‘And this,’ says Mr Bucket, spread=
ing
it out on the table, ‘is in the same hand, and consists of the same t=
wo
words.’
What two words?
He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his bl=
ack
pocket-book (book of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads,
boldly written in each, ‘Lady Dedlock.’
‘Yes, yes,’ says Mr Bucket. ‘=
;But
I could have made the money without this anonymous information.’
Having put the letters in his book of fate and
girdled it up again, he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner,
which is brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr Bucket
frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint, that =
he
likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry better than anyth=
ing
you can offer him. Consequently he fills and empties his glass with a smack=
of
his lips and is proceeding with his refreshment when an idea enters his min=
d.
Mr Bucket softly opens the door of communicati=
on
between that room and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and t=
he
fire is sinking low. Mr Bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the
room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they arrive.
Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr Bucket draws near and exa=
mines
the directions. ‘No,’ he says, ‘there's none in that hand.
It's only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, to-morrow.’
With that he returns to finish his dinner with=
a
good appetite, and after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir
Leicester has received him there these several evenings past to know whethe=
r he
has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the funer=
al)
and Volumnia are in attendance.
Mr Bucket makes three distinctly different bow=
s to
these three people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to
Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom it ai=
rily
says, ‘You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I know you.=
8217;
Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr Bucket rubs his
hands.
‘Have you anything new to communicate,
officer?’ inquires Sir Leicester. ‘Do you wish to hold any
conversation with me in private?’
‘Why--not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedloc=
k,
Baronet.’
‘Because my time,’ pursues Sir
Leicester, ‘is wholly at your disposal with a view to the vindication=
of
the outraged majesty of the law.’
Mr Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, roug=
ed
and necklaced, as though he would respectfully observe, ‘I do assure =
you,
you're a pretty creetur. I've seen hundreds worse looking at your time of l=
ife,
I have indeed.’
The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perha=
ps
of the humanizing influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-=
hat
notes and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr Bucket prices that
decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia is writ=
ing
poetry.
‘If I have not,’ pursues Sir
Leicester, ‘in the most emphatic manner, adjured you, officer, to
exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious case, I particularly desire to
take the present opportunity of rectifying any omission I may have made. Le=
t no
expense be a consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can in=
cur
none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall hesitate for=
a
moment to bear.’
Mr Bucket made Sir Leicester's bow again as a
response to this liberality.
‘My mind,’ Sir Leicester adds with=
a
generous warmth, ‘has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its t=
one
since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its
tone. But it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of
consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted
adherent.’
Sir Leicester's voice trembles and his grey ha=
ir
stirs upon his head. Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is
aroused.
‘I declare,’ he says, ‘I
solemnly declare that until this crime is discovered and, in the course of
justice, punished, I almost feel as if there were a stain upon my name. A
gentleman who has devoted a large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who
has devoted the last day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly =
sat
at my table and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is
struck down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he
may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first marked
because of his association with my house--which may have suggested his
possessing greater wealth and being altogether of greater importance than h=
is
own retiring demeanour would have indicated. If I cannot with my means and
influence and my position bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to lig=
ht,
I fail in the assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory and of my
fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me.’
While he makes this protestation with great
emotion and earnestness, looking round the room as if he were addressing an
assembly, Mr Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there
might be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.
‘The ceremony of to-day,’ continues
Sir Leicester, ‘strikingly illustrative of the respect in which my
deceased friend’--he lays a stress upon the word, for death levels all
distinctions--’was held by the flower of the land, has, I say, aggrav=
ated
the shock I have received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it
were my brother who had committed it, I would not spare him.’
Mr Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of
the deceased that he was the trustiest and dearest person!
‘You must feel it as a deprivation to yo=
u,
miss,’ replies Mr Bucket soothingly, ‘no doubt. He was calculat=
ed
to BE a deprivation, I'm sure he was.’
Volumnia gives Mr Bucket to understand, in rep=
ly,
that her sensitive mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as l=
ong
as she lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not t=
he
least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a cocked hat
for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of her melancholy
condition.
‘It gives a start to a delicate female,&=
#8217;
says Mr Bucket sympathetically, ‘but it'll wear off.’
Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is
doing? Whether they are going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful
soldier? Whether he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in=
the
law? And a great deal more to the like artless purpose.
‘Why you see, miss,’ returns Mr
Bucket, bringing the finger into persuasive action--and such is his natural
gallantry that he had almost said ‘my dear’--’it ain't ea=
sy
to answer those questions at the present moment. Not at the present moment.
I've kept myself on this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’ whom =
Mr
Bucket takes into the conversation in right of his importance, ‘morni=
ng,
noon, and night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don't think I could ha=
ve
had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer your
questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, will =
very
soon be made acquainted with all that has been traced. And I hope that he m=
ay
find it’--Mr Bucket again looks grave--’to his satisfaction.=
217;
The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll=
be
executed--zample. Thinks more interest's wanted--get man hanged
presentime--than get man place ten thousand a year. Hasn't a doubt--zample-=
-far
better hang wrong fler than no fler.
‘YOU know life, you know, sir,’ sa=
ys Mr
Bucket with a complimentary twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, =
216;and
you can confirm what I've mentioned to this lady. YOU don't want to be told
that from information I have received I have gone to work. You're up to wha=
t a
lady can't be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated stati=
on
of society, miss,’ says Mr Bucket, quite reddening at another narrow
escape from ‘my dear.’
‘The officer, Volumnia,’ observes =
Sir
Leicester, ‘is faithful to his duty, and perfectly right.’
Mr Bucket murmurs, ‘Glad to have the hon=
our
of your approbation, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.’
‘In fact, Volumnia,’ proceeds Sir =
Leicester,
‘it is not holding up a good model for imitation to ask the officer a=
ny
such questions as you have put to him. He is the best judge of his own
responsibility; he acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us,=
who
assist in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them
into execution. Or,’ says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for Volumnia
was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, ‘or who vindi=
cate
their outraged majesty.’
Volumnia with all humility explains that she h=
ad
not merely the plea of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of=
her
sex in general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for
the darling man whose loss they all deplore.
‘Very well, Volumnia,’ returns Sir=
Leicester.
‘Then you cannot be too discreet.’
Mr Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to =
be
heard again.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have =
no
objections to telling this lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I
look upon the case as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case--a beaut=
iful
case--and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to sup=
ply
in a few hours.’
‘I am very glad indeed to hear it,’
says Sir Leicester. ‘Highly creditable to you.’
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’
returns Mr Bucket very seriously, ‘I hope it may at one and the same =
time
do me credit and prove satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful
case, you see, miss,’ Mr Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir
Leicester, ‘I mean from my point of view. As considered from other po=
ints
of view, such cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very
strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, =
what
you would think to be phenomenons, quite.’
Volumnia, with her innocent little scream,
supposes so.
‘Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in =
high
families, in great families,’ says Mr Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir
Leicester aside. ‘I have had the honour of being employed in high
families before, and you have no idea--come, I'll go so far as to say not e=
ven
YOU have any idea, sir,’ this to the debilitated cousin, ‘what
games goes on!’
The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows =
on
his head, in a prostration of boredom yawns, ‘Vayli,’ being the
used-up for ‘very likely.’
Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the
officer, here majestically interposes with the words, ‘Very good. Tha=
nk
you!’ and also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there =
is
an end of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they
must take the consequences. ‘You will not forget, officer,’ he =
adds
with condescension, ‘that I am at your disposal when you please.̵=
7;
Mr Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow
morning, now, would suit, in case he should be as for'ard as he expects to =
be.
Sir Leicester replies, ‘All times are alike to me.’ Mr Bucket m=
akes
his three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him.
‘Might I ask, by the by,’ he says =
in a
low voice, cautiously returning, ‘who posted the reward-bill on the
staircase.’
‘I ordered it to be put up there,’
replies Sir Leicester.
‘Would it be considered a liberty, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if I was to ask you why?’
‘Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous
part of the house. I think it cannot be too prominently kept before the who=
le
establishment. I wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the cr=
ime,
the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the same
time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject see any
objection--’
Mr Bucket sees none now; the bill having been =
put
up, had better not be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws,
closing the door on Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her
remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue Chamber.
In his fondness for society and his adaptabili=
ty
to all grades, Mr Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire--bright=
and
warm on the early winter night--admiring Mercury.
‘Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?=
217;
says Mr Bucket.
‘Three,’ says Mercury.
‘Are you so much? But then, you see, you=
're
broad in proportion and don't look it. You're not one of the weak-legged on=
es,
you ain't. Was you ever modelled now?’ Mr Bucket asks, conveying the
expression of an artist into the turn of his eye and head.
Mercury never was modelled.
‘Then you ought to be, you know,’ =
says
Mr Bucket; ‘and a friend of mine that you'll hear of one day as a Roy=
al
Academy sculptor would stand something handsome to make a drawing of your
proportions for the marble. My Lady's out, ain't she?’
‘Out to dinner.’
‘Goes out pretty well every day, don't s=
he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not to be wondered at!’ says Mr
Bucket. ‘Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and so graceful and so
elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she g=
oes.
Was your father in the same way of life as yourself?’
Answer in the negative.
‘Mine was,’ says Mr Bucket. ‘=
;My
father was first a page, then a footman, then a butler, then a steward, the=
n an
inn-keeper. Lived universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his l=
ast
breath that he considered service the most honourable part of his career, a=
nd
so it was. I've a brother in service,
Mercury replies, ‘As good as you can exp=
ect.’
‘Ah!’ says Mr Bucket. ‘A lit=
tle
spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! What can you anticipate when they're so
handsome as that? And we like 'em all the better for it, don't we?’
Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his
bright peach-blossom small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with
the air of a man of gallantry and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels an=
d a
violent ringing at the bell. ‘Talk of the angels,’ says Mr Buck=
et. ‘Here
she is!’
The doors are thrown open, and she passes thro=
ugh
the hall. Still very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two
beautiful bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is
particularly attractive to Mr Bucket. He looks at them with an eager eye and
rattles something in his pocket--halfpence perhaps.
Noticing him at his distance, she turns an
inquiring look on the other Mercury who has brought her home.
‘Mr Bucket, my Lady.’
Mr Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passi=
ng
his familiar demon over the region of his mouth.
‘Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?=
8217;
‘No, my Lady, I've seen him!’
‘Have you anything to say to me?’<= o:p>
‘Not just at present, my Lady.’
‘Have you made any new discoveries?̵=
7;
‘A few, my Lady.’
This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a
stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. Mr Bucket, moving towards the staircase-fo=
ot,
watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave, pa=
st
murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wal=
l,
past the printed bill, which she looks at going by, out of view.
‘She's a lovely woman, too, she really i=
s,’
says Mr Bucket, coming back to Mercury. ‘Don't look quite healthy tho=
ugh.’
Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suf=
fers
much from headaches.
Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr Bucket would
recommend for that. Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometim=
es
for two hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
‘Are you sure you're quite so much as six
foot three?’ asks Mr Bucket. ‘Begging your pardon for interrupt=
ing
you a moment?’
Not a doubt about it.
‘You're so well put together that I
shouldn't have thought it. But the household troops, though considered fine
men, are built so straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight,
though?’
Oh, yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. Oh, of
course! Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
‘I suppose you ain't in the habit of wal=
king
yourself?’ says Mr Bucket. ‘Not much time for it, I should say?=
’
Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers
carriage exercise.
‘To be sure,’ says Mr Bucket. R=
16;That
makes a difference. Now I think of it,’ says Mr Bucket, warming his h=
ands
and looking pleasantly at the blaze, ‘she went out walking the very n=
ight
of this business.’
‘To be sure she did! I let her into the
garden over the way.’
‘And left her there. Certainly you did. I
saw you doing it.’
‘I didn't see YOU,’ says Mercury.<= o:p>
‘I was rather in a hurry,’ returns=
Mr
Bucket, ‘for I was going to visit a aunt of mine that lives at
Chelsea--next door but two to the old original Bun House--ninety year old t=
he
old lady is, a single woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be
passing at the time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten.’=
;
‘Half-past nine.’
‘You're right. So it was. And if I don't
deceive myself, my Lady was muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fr=
inge
to it?’
‘Of course she was.’
Of course she was. Mr Bucket must return to a
little work he has to get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with
Mercury in acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he--this =
is
all he asks--will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing i=
t on
that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of both parties?
Refreshed by sleep, Mr Bucket rises betimes in=
the
morning and prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean sh=
irt
and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, he
lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of severe study,=
Mr
Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a foundation to work upon,
together with tea, eggs, toast, and marmalade on a corresponding scale. Hav=
ing
much enjoyed these strengthening matters and having held subtle conference =
with
his familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury ‘just to mention
quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready for me,=
I'm
ready for him.’ A gracious message being returned that Sir Leicester =
will
expedite his dressing and join Mr Bucket in the library within ten minutes,=
Mr
Bucket repairs to that apartment and stands before the fire with his finger=
on
his chin, looking at the blazing coals.
Thoughtful Mr Bucket is, as a man may be with
weighty work to do, but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of h=
is
face he might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred gui=
neas
certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high reputation involved in =
his
playing his hand out to the last card in a masterly way. Not in the least
anxious or disturbed is Mr Bucket when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes t=
he
baronet aside as he comes slowly to his easy-chair with that observant grav=
ity
of yesterday in which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity=
of
the idea, a touch of compassion.
‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting,
officer, but I am rather later than my usual hour this morning. I am not we=
ll.
The agitation and the indignation from which I have recently suffered have =
been
too much for me. I am subject to--gout’--Sir Leicester was going to s=
ay
indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr Bucket palpably
knows all about it--’and recent circumstances have brought it on.R=
17;
As he takes his seat with some difficulty and =
with
an air of pain, Mr Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his l=
arge
hands on the library-table.
‘I am not aware, officer,’ Sir
Leicester observes; raising his eyes to his face, ‘whether you wish u=
s to
be alone, but that is entirely as you please. If you do, well and good. If =
not,
Miss Dedlock would be interested--’
‘Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,=
217;
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.’=
;
‘That is enough.’
‘So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baro=
net,’
Mr Bucket resumes, ‘that I was on the point of asking your permission=
to
turn the key in the door.’
‘By all means.’ Mr Bucket skilfully
and softly takes that precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from me=
re
force of habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
from the outerside.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I menti=
oned
yesterday evening that I wanted but a very little to complete this case. I =
have
now completed it and collected proof against the person who did this crime.=
’
‘Against the soldier?’
‘No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the sold=
ier.’
Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, =
8216;Is
the man in custody?’
Mr Bucket tells him, after a pause, ‘It =
was
a woman.’ Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly
ejaculates, ‘Good heaven!’
‘Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,=
217;
Mr Bucket begins, standing over him with one hand spread out on the
library-table and the forefinger of the other in impressive use, ‘it'=
s my
duty to prepare you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far =
as
to say that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you=
are
a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman is capable=
of.
A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly and steadily. A
gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against almost any blow. Why, ta=
ke
yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. If there's a blow to be inflicted=
on
you, you naturally think of your family. You ask yourself, how would all th=
em
ancestors of yours, away to Julius Caesar--not to go beyond him at
present--have borne that blow; you remember scores of them that would have
borne it well; and you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the
family credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.’
Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and
grasping the elbows, sits looking at him with a stony face.
‘Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,’ proc=
eeds
Mr Bucket, ‘thus preparing you, let me beg of you not to trouble your
mind for a moment as to anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much
about so many characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or
less don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board tha=
t would
surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken place, why my knowing=
it
is no odds at all, any possible move whatever (provided it's in a wrong
direction) being a probable move according to my experience. Therefore, wha=
t I
say to you, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourse=
lf
be put out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family affairs=
.’
‘I thank you for your preparation,’
returns Sir Leicester after a silence, without moving hand, foot, or featur=
e, ‘which
I hope is not necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. B=
e so
good as to go on. Also’--Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow =
of
his figure--’also, to take a seat, if you have no objection.’
None at all. Mr Bucket brings a chair and
diminishes his shadow. ‘Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this
short preface I come to the point. Lady Dedlock--’
Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and
stares at him fiercely. Mr Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollie=
nt.
‘Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally
admired. That's what her ladyship is; she's universally admired,’ say=
s Mr
Bucket.
‘I would greatly prefer, officer,’=
Sir
Leicester returns stiffly, ‘my Lady's name being entirely omitted from
this discussion.’
‘So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baro=
net,
but--it's impossible.’
‘Impossible?’
Mr Bucket shakes his relentless head.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's
altogether impossible. What I have got to say is about her ladyship. She is=
the
pivot it all turns on.’
‘Officer,’ retorts Sir Leicester w=
ith
a fiery eye and a quivering lip, ‘you know your duty. Do your duty, b=
ut
be careful not to overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it.
You bring my Lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility--=
upon
your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a name for common persons to tri=
fle
with!’
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say w=
hat
I must say, and no more.’
‘I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go o=
n.
Go on, sir!’ Glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the
angry figure trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr Buck=
et
feels his way with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it beco=
mes
my duty to tell you that the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn long entertained mistr=
usts
and suspicions of Lady Dedlock.’
‘If he had dared to breathe them to me,
sir--which he never did--I would have killed him myself!’ exclaims Sir
Leicester, striking his hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury =
of
the act he stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr Bucket, whose forefinger =
is
slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes his head=
.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr
Tulkinghorn was deep and close, and what he fully had in his mind in the ve=
ry
beginning I can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips t=
hat
he long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the sight =
of
some handwriting--in this very house, and when you yourself, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, were present--the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person=
who
had been her lover before you courted her and who ought to have been her
husband.’ Mr Bucket stops and deliberately repeats, ‘Ought to h=
ave
been her husband, not a doubt about it. I know from his lips that when that
person soon afterwards died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wret=
ched
lodging and his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own
inquiries and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visi=
t in
the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn employed me to
reckon up her ladyship--if you'll excuse my making use of the term we commo=
nly
employ--and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I confronted the maid in=
the
chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a witness who had been Lady Dedlock's
guide, and there couldn't be the shadow of a doubt that she had worn the yo=
ung
woman's dress, unknown to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeav=
our
to pave the way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by
saying that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes. A=
ll
this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and through your own
Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn followed up these
inquiries to the hour of his death and that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad
blood between them upon the matter that very night. Now, only you put that =
to
Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether,
even after he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the
intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mant=
le
with a deep fringe to it.’
Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the
cruel finger that is probing the life-blood of his heart.
‘You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leice=
ster
Dedlock, Baronet, from me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her
ladyship makes any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's=
no
use, that Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as
you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she knows s=
he
passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I
relate all this?’
Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with h=
is
hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and =
by
he takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,
though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr
Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed is upon his mann=
er,
over and above its usual shell of haughtiness, and Mr Bucket soon detects an
unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in
beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. With such soun=
ds
he now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that he do=
es
not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr
Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this
distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible
intelligence.
‘Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,&=
#8217;
returns Mr Bucket, ‘put it to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to
her ladyship, if you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective.
You'll find, or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn had the
intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered it rip=
e,
and further, that he had given her ladyship so to understand. Why, he might
have been going to reveal it the very morning when I examined the body! You
don't know what I'm going to say and do five minutes from this present time,
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, y=
ou
might wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?’
True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some troub=
le
those obtrusive sounds, says, ‘True.’ At this juncture a
considerable noise of voices is heard in the hall. Mr Bucket, after listeni=
ng,
goes to the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. T=
hen
he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, ‘Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken air, a=
s I
expected it might, the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden. The
chance to hush it is to let in these people now in a wrangle with your foot=
men.
Would you mind sitting quiet--on the family account--while I reckon 'em up?=
And
would you just throw in a nod when I seem to ask you for it?’
Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, ‘Off=
icer.
The best you can, the best you can!’ and Mr Bucket, with a nod and a
sagacious crook of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voic=
es
quickly die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury=
and
a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who bear betwe=
en
them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another man and two women co=
me
behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, =
Mr
Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and locks the door again. Sir Leicester look=
s on
at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare.
‘Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and
gentlemen,’ says Mr Bucket in a confidential voice. ‘I am Inspe=
ctor
Bucket of the Detective, I am; and this,’ producing the tip of his
convenient little staff from his breast-pocket, ‘is my authority. Now,
you wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and
mind you, it ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old
gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your name is; I know it well.’
‘Well, and you never heard any harm of i=
t!’
cries Mr Smallweed in a shrill loud voice.
‘You don't happen to know why they killed
the pig, do you?’ retorts Mr Bucket with a steadfast look, but without
loss of temper.
‘No!’
‘Why, they killed him,’ says Mr
Bucket, ‘on account of his having so much cheek. Don't YOU get into t=
he
same position, because it isn't worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of
conversing with a deaf person, are you?’
‘Yes,’ snarls Mr Smallweed, ‘=
;my
wife's deaf.’
‘That accounts for your pitching your vo=
ice
so high. But as she ain't here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will =
you,
and I'll not only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit,’ s=
ays Mr
Bucket. ‘This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?̵=
7;
‘Name of Chadband,’ Mr Smallweed p=
uts
in, speaking henceforth in a much lower key.
‘Once had a friend and brother serjeant =
of
the same name,’ says Mr Bucket, offering his hand, ‘and
consequently feel a liking for it. Mrs Chadband, no doubt?’
‘And Mrs Snagsby,’ Mr Smallweed
introduces.
‘Husband a law-stationer and a friend of=
my
own,’ says Mr Bucket. ‘Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?=
’
‘Do you mean what business have we come
upon?’ Mr Smallweed asks, a little dashed by the suddenness of this t=
urn.
‘Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear w= hat it's all about in presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.’<= o:p>
Mr Smallweed, beckoning Mr Chadband, takes a
moment's counsel with him in a whisper. Mr Chadband, expressing a considera=
ble
amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, sa=
ys
aloud, ‘Yes. You first!’ and retires to his former place.
‘I was the client and friend of Mr
Tulkinghorn,’ pipes Grandfather Smallweed then; ‘I did business
with him. I was useful to him, and he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gon=
e,
was my brother-in-law. He was own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways =
Mrs
Smallweed. I come into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all =
his
effects. They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters
belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a shelf =
in
the side of Lady Jane's bed--his cat's bed. He hid all manner of things awa=
y,
everywheres. Mr Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and got 'em, but I looked 'em over
first. I'm a man of business, and I took a squint at 'em. They was letters =
from
the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a comm=
on
name, Honoria, is it? There's no lady in this house that signs Honoria is
there? Oh, no, I don't think so! Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the s=
ame
hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don't think so!’
Here Mr Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughi=
ng
in the midst of his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, ‘Oh, dear me! O=
h,
Lord! I'm shaken all to pieces!’
‘Now, when you're ready,’ says Mr
Bucket after awaiting his recovery, ‘to come to anything that concerns
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.’
‘Haven't I come to it, Mr Bucket?’
cries Grandfather Smallweed. ‘Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not =
with
Captain Hawdon, and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the
bargain? Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns =
me,
if it don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I wo=
n't
have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em over to my friend and solicitor=
, Mr
Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else.’
‘Why, he paid you for them, you know, and
handsome too,’ says Mr Bucket.
‘I don't care for that. I want to know w=
ho's
got 'em. And I tell you what we want--what we all here want, Mr Bucket. We =
want
more painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the inte=
rest
and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond
dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You =
know
what I mean as well as any man.’
‘Now I tell you what,’ says Mr Buc=
ket,
instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating=
an
extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, ‘I am damned if I am a-g=
oing
to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as ha=
lf a
second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more painstaking and
search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don't =
know
the right time to stretch it out and put it on the arm that fired that shot=
?’
Such is the dread power of the man, and so
terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that Mr Smallweed begin=
s to
apologize. Mr Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
‘The advice I give you is, don't you tro=
uble
your head about the murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the
newspapers, and I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it be=
fore
long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say=
to
you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know who's got 'e=
m. I
don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the packet?’
Mr Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the
little bundle Mr Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and
identifies it as the same.
‘What have you got to say next?’ a=
sks Mr
Bucket. ‘Now, don't open your mouth too wide, because you don't look
handsome when you do it.’
‘I want five hundred pound.’
‘No, you don't; you mean fifty,’ s=
ays Mr
Bucket humorously.
It appears, however, that Mr Smallweed means f=
ive
hundred.
‘That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, to consider (without admitting or promising anything) this
bit of business,’ says Mr Bucket--Sir Leicester mechanically bows his
head--’and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. =
Why,
it's an unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better th=
an
that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?’
Mr Smallweed is quite clear that he had better
not.
‘Then,’ says Mr Bucket, ‘let=
's
hear Mr Chadband. Lord! Many a time I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of th=
at
name; and a moderate man he was in all respects, as ever I come across!R=
17;
Thus invited, Mr Chadband steps forth, and aft=
er a
little sleek smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,
delivers himself as follows, ‘My friends, we are now--Rachael, my wif=
e,
and I--in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in the mansion=
s of
the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are
bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, beca=
use
we are bidden to play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance wi=
th
them? No. Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful
secret, and do we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same
thing, money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.’
‘You're a man of business, you are,̵=
7;
returns Mr Bucket, very attentive, ‘and consequently you're going on =
to
mention what the nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do
better.’
‘Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of
love,’ says Mr Chadband with a cunning eye, ‘proceed unto it.
Rachael, my wife, advance!’
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,=
217;
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 offi=
cer,
‘YOU will be 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 fing=
er. ‘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 confus=
edly
comes to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, wh=
om 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 la=
te 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 pres=
ent
company excepted, has plotted against Mrs Snagsby's peace. There is Mr Gupp=
y,
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 Snags=
by
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 e=
ver
on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr Snagsby's full exposure a=
nd 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, ari=
sing
from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
While this exordium is in hand--and it takes s=
ome
time--Mr Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs Snagsby's vin=
egar
at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attenti=
on
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 towa=
rds Mr
Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind.
‘Very good,’ says Mr Bucket. ̵=
6;Now
I understand you, you know, and being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, to look into this little matter,’ again Sir Leicester mechan=
ically
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,=
217;
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 sharpen=
ed,
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 yo=
u;
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! Alwa=
ys
curious, your delightful sex is!’ replies Mr Bucket with gallantry. &=
#8216;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 Smallw=
eed.
‘All right! Nominally five hundred.̵=
7; 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 ask=
s in
an insinuating tone.
Nobody having the hardihood to object to his d=
oing
so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up. Mr Bucket follows the=
m 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 th=
ink
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 m=
ore
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. Now,
with regard to the party to be apprehended.’
Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes h=
ave
been wide open, and he looks intently at Mr Bucket as Mr Bucket refers to h=
is
watch.
‘The party to be apprehended is now in t=
his
house,’ proceeds Mr Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand a=
nd
with rising spirits, ‘and I'm about to take her into custody in your
presence. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the cours=
e of
the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respect=
ing
this unfortunate family matter and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. No=
w,
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the
apprehension at present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from
first to last.’
Mr Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly
whispers Mercury, shuts the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded.
After a suspense of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman
enters. Mademoiselle Hortense.
The moment she is in the room Mr Bucket claps =
the
door to and puts his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions=
her
to turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in his
chair.
‘I ask you pardon,’ she mutters
hurriedly. ‘They tell me there was no one here.’
Her step towards the door brings her front to
front with Mr Bucket. Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns
deadly pale.
‘This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedloc=
k,’
says Mr Bucket, nodding at her. ‘This foreign young woman has been my
lodger for some weeks back.’
‘What do Sir Leicester care for that, you
think, my angel?’ returns mademoiselle in a jocular strain.
‘Why, my angel,’ returns Mr Bucket=
, ‘we
shall see.’
Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl up=
on
her tight face, which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, ‘You a=
re
very mysterieuse. Are you drunk?’
‘Tolerable sober, my angel,’ retur=
ns Mr
Bucket.
‘I come from arriving at this so detesta=
ble
house with your wife. Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell =
me
downstairs that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. =
What
is the intention of this fool's play, say then?’ mademoiselle demands,
with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beat=
ing
like a clock.
Mr Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
‘Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!=
8217;
cries mademoiselle with a toss of her head and a laugh. ‘Leave me to =
pass
downstairs, great pig.’ With a stamp of her foot and a menace.
‘Now, mademoiselle,’ says Mr Bucke=
t in
a cool determined way, ‘you go and sit down upon that sofy.’
‘I will not sit down upon nothing,’
she replies with a shower of nods.
‘Now, mademoiselle,’ repeats Mr
Bucket, making no demonstration except with the finger, ‘you sit down
upon that sofy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I take you into custody on a ch=
arge
of murder, and you don't need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to on=
e of
your sex and a foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's
rougher ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, a=
s a
friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go
and sit down upon that sofy.’
Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated
voice while that something in her cheek beats fast and hard, ‘You are=
a
devil.’
‘Now, you see,’ Mr Bucket proceeds
approvingly, ‘you're comfortable and conducting yourself as I should
expect a foreign young woman of your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece =
of
advice, and it's this, don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say
anything here, and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short,
the less you PARLAY, the better, you know.’ Mr Bucket is very complac=
ent
over this French explanation.
Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of =
the
mouth and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in=
a
rigid state, with her hands clenched--and her feet too, one might
suppose--muttering, ‘Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!’ ‘N=
ow,
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’ says Mr Bucket, and from this time f=
orth
the finger never rests, ‘this young woman, my lodger, was her ladyshi=
p's
maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this young woman, besides bei=
ng
extraordinary vehement and passionate against her ladyship after being
discharged--’
‘Lie!’ cries mademoiselle. ‘I
discharge myself.’
‘Now, why don't you take my advice?̵=
7;
returns Mr Bucket in an impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. ‘I'm
surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be
used against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what I
say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you.’
‘Discharge, too,’ cries mademoisel=
le
furiously, ‘by her ladyship! Eh, my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I
r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with a ladyship so infame!’
‘Upon my soul I wonder at you!’ Mr
Bucket remonstrates. ‘I thought the French were a polite nation, I di=
d,
really. Yet to hear a female going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedloc=
k,
Baronet!’
‘He is a poor abused!’ cries
mademoiselle. ‘I spit upon his house, upon his name, upon his imbecil=
ity,’
all of which she makes the carpet represent. ‘Oh, that he is a great =
man!
Oh, yes, superb! Oh, heaven! Bah!’
‘Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,’
proceeds Mr Bucket, ‘this intemperate foreigner also angrily took it =
into
her head that she had established a claim upon Mr Tulkinghorn, deceased, by
attending on the occasion I told you of at his chambers, though she was lib=
erally
paid for her time and trouble.’
‘Lie!’ cries mademoiselle. ‘I
ref-use his money all togezzer.’
‘If you WILL PARLAY, you know,’ sa=
ys Mr
Bucket parenthetically, ‘you must take the consequences. Now, whether=
she
became my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then=
of
doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my
house in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers=
of
the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecut=
ing
and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer.’
‘Lie!’ cries mademoiselle. ‘=
All
lie!’
‘The murder was committed, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, and you know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you =
to
follow me close with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and
the case was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in the sa=
me
house) I took George into custody as having been seen hanging about there on
the night, and at very nigh the time of the murder, also as having been
overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions--even threate=
ning
him, as the witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether
from the first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no,
but he might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make =
it
my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!’
As Mr Bucket bends forward in some excitement-=
-for
him--and inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes upon him =
with
a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly together.
‘I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, at night and found this young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs
Bucket. She had made a mighty show of being fond of Mrs Bucket from her fir=
st
offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever--in
fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the
lamented memory of the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn. By the living Lord it flash=
ed
upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in =
her
hand, that she had done it!’
Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining
through her teeth and lips the words, ‘You are a devil.’
‘Now where,’ pursues Mr Bucket, =
8216;had
she been on the night of the murder? She had been to the theayter. (She rea=
lly
was there, I have since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I=
had
an artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult; and=
I
laid a trap for her--such a trap as I never laid yet, and such a venture as=
I
never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at
supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young
woman's ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet into Mrs Bucket's mouth that she
shouldn't say a word of surprise and told her all about it. My dear, don't =
you
give your mind to that again, or I shall link your feet together at the ank=
les.’
Mr Bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and
laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
‘What is the matter with you now?’=
she
asks him.
‘Don't you think any more,’ return=
s Mr
Bucket with admonitory finger, ‘of throwing yourself out of window.
That's what's the matter with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn't get u=
p;
I'll sit down by you. Now take my arm, will you? I'm a married man, you kno=
w;
you're acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.’
Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips,
with a painful sound she struggles with herself and complies.
‘Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case could never have been the case it is but for Mrs Bucket, who is a woman in fifty thousand--in a hundred and fifty thousand! = To throw this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house si= nce, though I've communicated with Mrs Bucket in the baker's loaves and in the m= ilk as often as required. My whispered words to Mrs Bucket when she had the she= et in her mouth were, 'My dear, can you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions against George, and this, and that, and t'other? = Can you do without rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertak= e to say, 'She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs Bucket says to me, as well as she could speak on acco= unt of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And she has acted up to it glorious!’<= o:p>
‘Lies!’ mademoiselle interposes. &=
#8216;All
lies, my friend!’
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did=
my
calculations come out under these circumstances? When I calculated that this
impetuous young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or rig=
ht?
I was right. What does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn? To throw
the murder on her ladyship.’
Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers
down again.
‘And she got encouragement in it from
hearing that I was always here, which was done a-purpose. Now, open that
pocket-book of mine, Sir Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of th=
rowing
it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
'Lady Dedlock' in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I stopped th=
is
very morning, and read the three words 'Lady Dedlock, Murderess' in it. The=
se
letters have been falling about like a shower of lady-birds. What do you say
now to Mrs Bucket, from her spy-place having seen them all 'written by this
young woman? What do you say to Mrs Bucket having, within this half- hour,
secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? W=
hat
do you say to Mrs Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this
young woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?’ Mr Bucket asks, triumph=
ant
in his admiration of his lady's genius.
Two things are especially observable as Mr Buc=
ket
proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosph=
ere
she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if a close net or a =
pall
were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure.
‘There is no doubt that her ladyship was= on the spot at the eventful period,’ says Mr Bucket, ‘and my forei= gn friend here saw her, I believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's heels. But that don't signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll say, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when = my foreign friend here is so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe ti= me to tear up the rest of that leaf, and when Mrs Bucket puts the pieces toget= her and finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.’<= o:p>
‘These are very long lies,’
mademoiselle interposes. ‘You prose great deal. Is it that you have
almost all finished, or are you speaking always?’ ‘Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet,’ proceeds Mr Bucket, who delights in a full title a=
nd
does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it, ‘=
the
last point in the case which I am now going to mention shows the necessity =
of
patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this
young woman yesterday without her knowledge when she was looking at the
funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had =
so
much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind =
so
rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was altogether s=
uch
a time for bringing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I =
had
been a younger hand with less experience, I should have taken her, certain.
Equally, last night, when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am s=
ure,
come home looking--why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from=
the
ocean--it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being charged =
with
a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to want to put an end =
to
the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I should =
have
lost the weapon. My prisoner here proposed to Mrs Bucket, after the departu=
re
of the funeral, that they should go per bus a little ways into the country =
and
take tea at a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
entertainment there's a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to fetch=
her
pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was; she was rather a
long time gone and came back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home
this was reported to me by Mrs Bucket, along with her observations and
suspicions. I had the piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a
couple of our men, and the pocket pistol was brought up before it had been
there half-a-dozen hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further throu=
gh
mine, and hold it steady, and I shan't hurt you!’
In a trice Mr Bucket snaps a handcuff on her
wrist. ‘That's one,’ says Mr Bucket. ‘Now the other, darl=
ing.
Two, and all told!’
He rises; she rises too. ‘Where,’ =
she
asks him, darkening her large eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal
them--and yet they stare, ‘where is your false, your treacherous, and
cursed wife?’
‘She's gone forrard to the Police Office=
,’
returns Mr Bucket. ‘You'll see her there, my dear.’
‘I would like to kiss her!’ exclai=
ms
Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like.
‘You'd bite her, I suspect,’ says =
Mr
Bucket.
‘I would!’ making her eyes very la=
rge.
‘I would love to tear her limb from limb.’
‘Bless you, darling,’ says Mr Buck=
et
with the greatest composure, ‘I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your s=
ex
have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ. You
don't mind me half so much, do you?’
‘No. Though you are a devil still.’=
;
‘Angel and devil by turns, eh?’ cr=
ies 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 ey=
e 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
restore him back to life?’
Mr Bucket answers, ‘Not exactly.’<= o:p>
‘That is droll. Listen yet one time. You=
are
very spiritual. Can you make a honourable lady of her?’
‘Don't be so malicious,’ says Mr
Bucket.
‘Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?’ c=
ries
mademoiselle, referring to Sir Leicester with ineffable disdain. ‘Eh!=
Oh,
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 ca=
n 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 despise you!’
With these last words she snaps her teeth toge=
ther
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 so peculiar =
to
himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering away with h=
er
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 wo=
ods
of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers
defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious
heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneerin=
g 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 an=
d to
which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair and his extended arm=
s.
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,
honoured, 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.
Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet
struck his great blow, as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself
with sleep preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along t=
he
freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire, making i=
ts
way towards London.
Railroads shall soon traverse all this country,
and with a rattle and a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor
over the wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such thin=
gs
are non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. Preparations=
are
afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and
their not yet united piers desolately look at one another over roads and
streams like brick and mortar couples with an obstacle to their union;
fragments of embankments are thrown up and left as precipices with torrents=
of
rusty carts and barrows tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on
hilltops, where there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and
abandoned in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the
night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.
Mrs Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at
Chesney Wold, sits within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs Bagnet with =
her
grey cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as bei=
ng
exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in accordance with
her usual course of travelling, but Mrs Rouncewell is too thoughtful of her
comfort to admit of her proposing it. The old lady cannot make enough of the
old girl. She sits, in her stately manner, holding her hand, and regardless=
of
its roughness, puts it often to her lips. ‘You are a mother, my dear
soul,’ says she many times, ‘and you found out my George's moth=
er!’
‘Why, George,’ returns Mrs Bagnet,= ‘was always free with me, ma'am, and when he said at our house to my Woolwich th= at of all the things my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a m= an, the comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line into = his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother into his mind. I had o= ften known him say to me, in past times, that he had behaved bad to her.’<= o:p>
‘Never, my dear!’ returns Mrs
Rouncewell, bursting into tears. ‘My blessing on him, never! He was
always fond of me, and loving to me, was my George! But he had a bold spiri=
t,
and he ran a little wild and went for a soldier. And I know he waited at fi=
rst,
in letting us know about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and
when he didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't =
be a
disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from a baby!=
’
The old lady's hands stray about her as of yor=
e,
while she recalls, all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, wh=
at a
gay good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at Chesn=
ey
Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young gentleman; how the =
dogs
took to him; how even the people who had been angry with him forgave him the
moment he was gone, poor boy. And now to see him after all, and in a prison
too! And the broad stomacher heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned
figure bends under its load of affectionate distress.
Mrs Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a go=
od
warm heart, leaves the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--=
not
without passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes-- and
presently chirps up in her cheery manner, ‘So I says to George when I
goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe outside), '=
What
ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I have seen all sorts, =
and
I have seen you pretty often in season and out of season, abroad and at hom=
e,
and I never see you so melancholy penitent.' 'Why, Mrs Bagnet,' says George,
'it's because I AM melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you s=
ee
me so.' 'What have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs Bagnet,' says
George, shaking his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a long
year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to heaven it wo=
n't
be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no more.' Now, ma'am, wh=
en
George says to me that it's best not tried to be undone now, I have my thou=
ghts
as I have often had before, and I draw it out of George how he comes to have
such things on him that afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by
chance, at the lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother
plain before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets
himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon years ba=
ck.
So I says to George when he has done, who is this old lady he has seen? And
George tells me it's Mrs Rouncewell, housekeeper for more than half a centu=
ry
to the Dedlock family down at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has
frequently told me before that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old
Lignum that night, 'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'=
8216;
All this Mrs Bagnet now relates for the twenti=
eth
time at least within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bi=
rd,
with a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the h=
um
of the wheels.
‘Bless you, and thank you,’ says M=
rs
Rouncewell. ‘Bless you, and thank you, my worthy soul!’
‘Dear heart!’ cries Mrs Bagnet in =
the
most natural manner. ‘No thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself,
ma'am, for being so ready to pay 'em! And mind once more, ma'am, what you h=
ad
best do on finding George to be your own son is to make him--for your sake
--have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear himself of a
charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't do to have truth a=
nd
justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers,’ exclaims the old
girl, apparently persuaded that the latter form a separate establishment and
have dissolved partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day.
‘He shall have,’ says Mrs Rouncewe=
ll, ‘all
the help that can be got for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I
have, and thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the wh=
ole
family will do their best. I--I know something, my dear; and will make my o=
wn
appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years, and finding him in a
jail at last.’
The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper=
's
manner in saying this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make=
a
powerful impression on Mrs Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers
them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs Bagnet wonders =
too
why Mrs Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, ‘My Lady, my Lady, =
my
Lady!’ over and over again.
The frosty night wears away, and the dawn brea=
ks,
and the post- chaise comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost=
of
a chaise departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and
hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day. London
reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great tribulation and
confusion, Mrs Bagnet quite fresh and collected--as she would be if her next
point, with no new equipage and outfit, were the Cape of Good Hope, the Isl=
and
of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any other military station.
But when they set out for the prison where the
trooper is confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her
lavender- coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its usual
accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece of old china
she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher is ruffled more th=
an
even the remembrance of this wayward son has ruffled it these many years.
Approaching the cell, they find the door openi=
ng
and a warder in the act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of
entreaty to him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to en=
ter
as he shuts the door.
So George, who is writing at his table, suppos=
ing
himself to be alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old
housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite enough
for Mrs Bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the mother and the son
together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their relationship.
Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a
gesture, not a word betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on,=
all
unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her emotions. =
But
they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs Bagnet understands them. T=
hey
speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affectio=
n,
cherished with no return since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a bett=
er
son loved less, and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak=
in
such touching language that Mrs Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they r=
un
glistening down her sun-brown face.
‘George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, t=
urn
and look at me!’
The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round=
the
neck, and falls down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance,
whether in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands
together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards=
her
breast, bows down his head, and cries.
‘My George, my dearest son! Always my
favourite, and my favourite still, where have you been these cruel years and
years? Grown such a man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like wh=
at I
knew he must be, if it pleased God he was alive!’
She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connec=
ted
for a time. All that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against =
the
whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with her
serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of old girls=
as
she is.
‘Mother,’ says the trooper when th=
ey
are more composed, ‘forgive me first of all, for I know my need of it=
.’
Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and
soul. She always has done it. She tells him how she has had it written in h=
er
will, these many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never
believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this happiness--and=
she
is an old woman now and can't look to live very long--she would have blessed
him with her last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son Geo=
rge.
‘Mother, I have been an undutiful troubl=
e to
you, and I have my reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmerin=
g of
a purpose in me too. When I left home I didn't care much, mother--I am afra=
id
not a great deal--for leaving; and went away and 'listed, harum-scarum, mak=
ing
believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not I, and that nobody cared f=
or
me.’
The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his
handkerchief, but there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual
manner of expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in
which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
‘So I wrote a line home, mother, as you =
too
well know, to say I had 'listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abro=
ad,
at one time I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better =
off;
and when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when I
might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I didn't thi=
nk
much about it. So on, from year to year, through a service of ten years, ti=
ll I
began to get older, and to ask myself why should I ever write.’
‘I don't find any fault, child--but not =
to
ease my mind, George? Not a word to your loving mother, who was growing old=
er
too?’
This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but =
he
sets himself up with a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
‘Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought
there would be small consolation then in hearing anything about me. There w=
ere
you, respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance North
Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and famous. There was =
I a
dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like him, but self-unmade--all my
earlier advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing pi=
cked
up but what unfitted me for most things that I could think of. What business
had I to make myself known? After letting all that time go by me, what good
could come of it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time
(being a man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for m=
e;
and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your mind =
as
it was.’
The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and
taking one of his powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
‘No, I don't say that it was so, mother,=
but
that I made it out to be so. I said just now, what good could come of it? W=
ell,
my dear mother, some good might have come of it to myself--and there was the
meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have purchased my
discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold; you would have bro=
ught
me and my brother and my brother's family together; you would all have
considered anxiously how to do something for me and set me up as a respecta=
ble
civilian. But how could any of you feel sure of me when I couldn't so much =
as
feel sure of myself? How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a
discredit to you an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discr=
edit
to himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother's child=
ren
in the face and pretend to set them an example--I, the vagabond boy who had=
run
away from home and been the grief and unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No,
George.' Such were my words, mother, when I passed this in review before me:
'You have made your bed. Now, lie upon it.'‘
Mrs Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form,
shakes her head at the old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as =
to
say, ‘I told you so!’ The old girl relieves her feelings and
testifies her interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great po=
ke
between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards repeats=
, at
intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never failing, after the
administration of each of these remonstrances, to resort to the whitened wa=
ll
and the grey cloak again.
‘This was the way I brought myself to th=
ink,
mother, that my best amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die up=
on
it. And I should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once
down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old comrade=
's
wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank her for it. I t=
hank
you for it, Mrs Bagnet, with all my heart and might.’
To which Mrs Bagnet responds with two pokes.
And now the old lady impresses upon her son
George, her own dear recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eye=
s,
the happy close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he =
must
be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence, that he m=
ust
yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be got, that he must act=
in
this serious plight as he shall be advised to act and must not be self-will=
ed,
however right, but must promise to think only of his poor old mother's anxi=
ety
and suffering until he is released, or he will break her heart.
‘Mother, 'tis little enough to consent t=
o,’
returns the trooper, stopping her with a kiss; ‘tell me what I shall =
do,
and I'll make a late beginning and do it. Mrs Bagnet, you'll take care of my
mother, I know?’
A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.=
‘If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr
Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, she will find them of her way of thinking, and
they will give her the best advice and assistance.’
‘And, George,’ says the old lady, =
‘we
must send with all haste for your brother. He is a sensible sound man as th=
ey
tell me--out in the world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know
much of it myself--and will be of great service.’
‘Mother,’ returns the trooper, =
216;is
it too soon to ask a favour?’
‘Surely not, my dear.’
‘Then grant me this one great favour. Do=
n't
let my brother know.’
‘Not know what, my dear?’
‘Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can'=
t bear
it; I can't make up my mind to it. He has proved himself so different from =
me
and has done so much to raise himself while I've been soldiering that I hav=
en't
brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under this char=
ge.
How could a man like him be expected to have any pleasure in such a discove=
ry?
It's impossible. No, keep my secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindn=
ess
than I deserve and keep my secret from my brother, of all men.’
‘But not always, dear George?’
‘Why, mother, perhaps not for good and
all--though I may come to ask that too--but keep it now, I do entreat you. =
If
it's ever broke to him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wis=
h,’
says the trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, ‘to break it myse=
lf
and be governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems =
to
take it.’
As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it is recognized in Mrs Bagnet's face, his mother yields her implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.<= o:p>
‘In all other respects, my dear mother, =
I'll
be as tractable and obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand ou=
t.
So now I am ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,’ he
glances at his writing on the table, ‘an exact account of what I knew=
of
the deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair. It's
entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in it but what=
's
wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever I
was called upon to say anything in my defence. I hope I may be let to do it
still; but I have no longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is =
said
or done, I give my promise not to have any.’
Matters being brought to this so far satisfact=
ory
pass, and time being on the wane, Mrs Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and
again the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the troop=
er
holds her to his broad chest.
‘Where are you going to take my mother, =
Mrs
Bagnet?’
‘I am going to the town house, my dear, =
the
family house. I have some business there that must be looked to directly,=
8217;
Mrs Rouncewell answers.
‘Will you see my mother safe there in a
coach, Mrs Bagnet? But of course I know you will. Why should I ask it!̵=
7;
Why indeed, Mrs Bagnet expresses with the
umbrella.
‘Take her, my old friend, and take my
gratitude along with you. Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a
hearty shake of the hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was
ten thousand pound in gold, my dear!’ So saying, the trooper puts his
lips to the old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his
cell.
No entreaties on the part of the good old
housekeeper will induce Mrs Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyan=
ce
home. Jumping out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing=
Mrs
Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off, arriving
soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and falling to washing the
greens as if nothing had happened.
My Lady is in that room in which she held her =
last
conference with the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, =
and
is looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so
leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs Rouncewell. What has
brought Mrs Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?
‘Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my L=
ady,
may I beg a word with you?’
What new occurrence is it that makes this tran=
quil
old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thou=
ght,
why does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange mistru=
st?
‘What is the matter? Sit down and take y=
our
breath.’
‘Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my
son--my youngest, who went away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in pri=
son.’
‘For debt?’
‘Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any
debt, and joyful.’
‘For what is he in prison then?’
‘Charged with a murder, my Lady, of whic=
h he
is as innocent as--as I am. Accused of the murder of Mr Tulkinghorn.’=
What does she mean by this look and this implo=
ring
gesture? Why does she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?
‘Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lad=
y,
my kind Lady! You must have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to
forgive me. I was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. =
But
think of my dear son wrongfully accused.’
‘I do not accuse him.’
‘No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he =
is
in prison and in danger. Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to hel=
p to
clear him, say it!’
What delusion can this be? What power does she
suppose is in the person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if i=
t be
unjust? Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with
fear.
‘My Lady, I came away last night from
Chesney Wold to find my son in my old age, and the step upon the Ghost's Wa=
lk
was so constant and so solemn that I never heard the like in all these year=
s.
Night after night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your
rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last night, my
Lady, I got this letter.’
‘What letter is it?’
‘Hush! Hush!’ The housekeeper looks
round and answers in a frightened whisper, ‘My Lady, I have not breat=
hed
a word of it, I don't believe what's written in it, I know it can't be true=
, I
am sure and certain that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you m=
ust
have a heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to other=
s,
if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for
keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think of me, and conquer t=
hat
reason, and let it be known! This is the most I consider possible. I know y=
ou
are not a hard lady, but you go your own way always without help, and you a=
re
not familiar with your friends; and all who admire you--and all do --as a
beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who
can't be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry reasons
for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, oh, pray, thi=
nk
of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in this family which=
she
dearly loves, and relent, and help to clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady,&=
#8217;
the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, ‘I am so humble i=
n my
place and you are by nature so high and distant that you may not think what=
I
feel for my child, but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold=
as
to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or
justice at this fearful time!’
Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until
she takes the letter from her hand.
‘Am I to read this?’
‘When I am gone, my Lady, if you please,=
and
then remembering the most that I consider possible.’
‘I know of nothing I can do. I know of
nothing I reserve that can affect your son. I have never accused him.’=
;
‘My Lady, you may pity him the more unde=
r a
false accusation after reading the letter.’
The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter=
in
her hand. In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been =
when
the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness
would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress
emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that
destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like fl=
ies
in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the
feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued =
even
her wonder until now.
She opens the letter. Spread out upon the pape=
r is
a printed account of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on t=
he
floor, shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with=
the
word ‘murderess’ attached.
It falls out of her hand. How long it may have
lain upon the ground she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant
stands before her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words =
have
probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her head befo=
re she
begins to understand them.
‘Let him come in!’
He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, w=
hich
she has taken from the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eye=
s of
Mr Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, ch=
illing
state.
‘Your ladyship may not be at first dispo=
sed
to excuse this visit from one who has never been welcome to your ladyship=
8217;--which
he don't complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been =
any
particular reason on the face of things why he should be-- ‘but I hope
when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault with me,=
’
says Mr Guppy.
‘Do so.’
‘Thank your ladyship. I ought first to
explain to your ladyship,’ Mr Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and p=
uts
his hat on the carpet at his feet, ‘that Miss Summerson, whose image,=
as
I formerly mentioned to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprint=
ed
on my 'eart until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,
communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your ladyship la=
st,
that she particularly wished me to take no steps whatever in any manner at =
all
relating to her. And Miss Summerson's wishes being to me a law (except as
connected with circumstances over which I have no control), I consequently
never expected to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship
again.’
And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily
reminds him.
‘And yet I am here now,’ Mr Guppy
admits. ‘My object being to communicate to your ladyship, under the s=
eal
of confidence, why I am here.’
He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or= too briefly. ‘Nor can I,’ Mr Guppy returns with a sense of injury u= pon him, ‘too particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no interes= ted views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for my promise to Mi= ss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred--I, in point of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have seen 'em further first.’<= o:p>
Mr Guppy considers this a favourable moment for
sticking up his hair with both hands.
‘Your ladyship will remember when I ment=
ion
it that the last time I was here I run against a party very eminent in our
profession and whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that
time apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call sharp
practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely difficult for=
me
to be sure that I hadn't inadvertently led up to something contrary to Miss
Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no recommendation, but I may say for mys=
elf
that I am not so bad a man of business neither.’
Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr
Guppy immediately withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.=
‘Indeed, it has been made so hard,’=
; he
goes on, ‘to have any idea what that party was up to in combination w=
ith
others that until the loss which we all deplore I was gravelled--an express=
ion
which your ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to
consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise--a name by which I refe=
r to
another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not acquainted with--=
got
to be so close and double-faced that at times it wasn't easy to keep one's
hands off his 'ead. However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities,=
and
what with the help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr Tony Weevle (who is=
of
a high aristocratic turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up=
in
his room), I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put
your ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask you
whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't mean
fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss Barbary's old
servant, or as a person without the use of his lower extremities, carried
upstairs similarly to a guy?’
‘No!’
‘Then I assure your ladyship that such
visitors have been here and have been received here. Because I saw them at =
the
door, and waited at the corner of the square till they came out, and took h=
alf
an hour's turn afterwards to avoid them.’
‘What have I to do with that, or what ha=
ve
you? I do not understand you. What do you mean?’
‘Your ladyship, I come to put you on your
guard. There may be no occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my
best to keep my promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Sm=
all
has dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those lette=
rs I
was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they
were. That if there was anything to be blown upon, it IS blown upon. That t=
he
visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it.=
And
that the money is made, or making.’
Mr Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
‘Your ladyship, you know best whether
there's anything in what I say or whether there's nothing. Something or
nothing, I have acted up to Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone=
and
in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for
me. In case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your g=
uard
when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to out=
live
my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now
take my farewell of your ladyship, and assure you that there's no danger of
your ever being waited on by me again.’
She scarcely acknowledges these parting words =
by
any look, but when he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.
‘Where is Sir Leicester?’
Mercury reports that he is at present shut up =
in
the library alone.
‘Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this
morning?’
Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a
description of them, which has been anticipated by Mr Guppy. Enough; he may=
go.
So! All is broken down. Her name is in these m=
any
mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be
spreading while she thinks about it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so =
long
foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible acc=
user
as the murderess of her enemy.
Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, of=
ten
wished him dead. Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusati=
on
comes upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she recalls
how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may be represented=
to
have sent her favourite girl away so soon before merely to release herself =
from
observation, she shudders as if the hangman's hands were at her neck.
She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies
with her hair all wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a
couch. She rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and roc=
ks
and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really were t=
he
murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.
For as her murderous perspective, before the d=
oing
of the deed, however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have =
been
closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her fr=
om
seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences would have rus=
hed
in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure was laid low--which always
happens when a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be on =
the watch
before her, and she used to think, ‘if some mortal stroke would but f=
all
on this old man and take him from my way!’ it was but wishing that al=
l he
held against her in his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in
many places. So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What
was his death but the key- stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch
begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemea=
l!
Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and
overshadows her that from this pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and
imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate=
and
imperturbable in his coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. Hunted, s=
he
flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,
overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is
overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.
She hurriedly addresses these lines to her
husband, seals, and leaves them on her table:
If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder,
believe that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me, for I am
innocent of nothing else that you have heard, or will hear, laid to my char=
ge.
He prepared me, on that fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you.
After he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the garden where=
I
sometimes walk, but really to follow him and make one last petition that he
would not protract the dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him,
you do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next morning.
I found his house dark and silent. I rang twic=
e at
his door, but there was no reply, and I came home.
I have no home left. I will encumber you no mo=
re.
May you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on w=
hom
you have wasted a most generous devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper
shame than that with which she hurries from herself--and who writes this la=
st
adieu.
She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her
jewels and her money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is
empty, opens and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty w=
ind.
Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the
Dedlock town house stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grand=
eur
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 th=
em
seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating creatures look like Death a=
nd
the Lady fused together, dazzle the eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews
come easily swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wi=
gs,
deep sunk into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries
bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a spectacle for =
the
angels.
The Dedlock town house changes not externally,=
and
hours pass before its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the
fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that
disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to
repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle tapping at the door
producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes
possession.
The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that
grass-grown city of the ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curio=
sity
which impels her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about
with a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.
Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of hovering
over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a short peck at t=
his
document and a blink with her head on one side at that document, and hopping
about from table to table with her glass at her eye in an inquisitive and
restless manner. In the course of these researches she stumbles over someth=
ing,
and turning her glass in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the grou=
nd
like a felled tree.
Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a
considerable augmentation of reality from this surprise, and the house is
quickly in commotion. Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently
rung, doctors are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, b=
ut
not found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her
letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is doubtful yet
whether he has not received another missive from another world requiring to=
be
personally answered, and all the living languages, and all the dead, are as=
one
to him.
They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and
rub, and fan, and put ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. =
Howbeit,
the day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous
breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle that=
is
occasionally passed before them. But when this change begins, it goes on; a=
nd
by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even his hand in token that he hears=
and
comprehends.
He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately
gentleman, somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled
face. He lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit sh=
adow
of himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been thoroughly
persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word he said that his
words really had come to sound as if there were something in them. But now =
he
can only whisper, and what he whispers sounds like what it is--mere jumble =
and
jargon.
His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands =
at
his bedside. It is the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure
from it. After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes
signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first understand =
him;
it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants and brings in a slate=
.
After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls
upon it in a hand that is not his, ‘Chesney Wold?’
No, she tells him; he is in London. He was tak=
en
ill in the library this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to
come to London and is able to attend upon him.
‘It is not an illness of any serious
consequence, Sir Leicester. You will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leiceste=
r.
All the gentlemen say so.’ This, with the tears coursing down her fair
old face.
After making a survey of the room and looking =
with
particular attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, =
‘My
Lady.’
‘My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before=
you
were taken ill, and don't know of your illness yet.’
He points again, in great agitation, at the two
words. They all try to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitat=
ion.
On their looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate
once more and writes ‘My Lady. For God's sake, where?’ And make=
s an
imploring moan.
It is thought better that his old housekeeper
should give him Lady Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or
can surmise. She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having r=
ead
it twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be seen a=
nd
lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a swoon, and it is a=
n hour
before he opens his eyes, reclining on his faithful and attached old servan=
t's
arm. The doctors know that he is best with her, and when not actively engag=
ed
about him, stand aloof.
The slate comes into requisition again, but the
word he wants to write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and
affliction at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go m=
ad
in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he labour=
s of
expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the letter B, and th=
ere
stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his misery, he puts Mr before it. The
old housekeeper suggests Bucket. Thank heaven! That's his meaning.
Mr Bucket is found to be downstairs, by
appointment. Shall he come up?
There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir
Leicester's burning wish to see him or the desire he signifies to have the =
room
cleared of every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr Bucket
appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his high es=
tate
to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sor=
ry
to see you like this. I hope you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account=
of
the family credit.’
Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and
looks intently in his face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into=
Mr
Bucket's eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is
still glancing over the words, he indicates, ‘Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, I understand you.’
Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. ‘Fu=
ll
forgiveness. Find--’ Mr Bucket stops his hand.
‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll fi=
nd
her. But my search after her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be
lost.’
With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir
Leicester Dedlock's look towards a little box upon a table.
‘Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet? Certainly. Open it with one of these here keys? Certainly. The
littlest key? TO be sure. Take the notes out? So I will. Count 'em? That's =
soon
done. Twenty and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twen=
ty,
and forty's one sixty. Take 'em for expenses? That I'll do, and render an
account of course. Don't spare money? No I won't.’
The velocity and certainty of Mr Bucket's
interpretation on all these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs
Rouncewell, who holds the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and
hands as he starts up, furnished for his journey.
‘You're George's mother, old lady; that's
about what you are, I believe?’ says Mr Bucket aside, with his hat
already on and buttoning his coat.
‘Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother.=
8217;
‘So I thought, according to what he
mentioned to me just now. Well, then, I'll tell you something. You needn't =
be
distressed no more. Your son's all right. Now, don't you begin a-crying,
because what you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock,
Baronet, and you won't do that by crying. As to your son, he's all right, I
tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same. He's
discharged honourable; that's about what HE is; with no more imputation on =
his
character than there is on yours, and yours is a tidy one, I'LL bet a pound.
You may trust me, for I took your son. He conducted himself in a game way, =
too,
on that occasion; and he's a fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady,
and you're a mother and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models=
in
a caravan. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me I'll go
through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right or lef=
t,
or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found what I go in sea=
rch
of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part? Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you better, and these family affairs
smoothed over--as, Lord, many other family affairs equally has been, and
equally will be, to the end of time.’
With this peroration, Mr Bucket, buttoned up, =
goes
quietly out, looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the
night in quest of the fugitive.
His first step is to take himself to Lady
Dedlock's rooms and look all over them for any trifling indication that may
help him. The rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr Bucket with a wax-li=
ght
in his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental inventory =
of
the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to
see a sight--which nobody DOES see, as he is particular to lock himself in.=
‘A spicy boudoir, this,’ says Mr
Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up in his French by the blow of the
morning. ‘Must have cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away f=
rom,
these; she must have been hard put to it!’
Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking
into caskets and jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various
mirrors, and moralizes thereon.
‘One might suppose I was a-moving in the
fashionable circles and getting myself up for almac's,’ says Mr Bucke=
t. ‘I
begin to think I must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.’
Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty lit=
tle
chest in an inner drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it=
can
scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white
handkerchief.
‘Hum! Let's have a look at YOU,’ s=
ays Mr
Bucket, putting down the light. ‘What should YOU be kept by yourself =
for?
What's YOUR motive? Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? Yo=
u've
got a mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?’
He finds it as he speaks, ‘Esther Summer=
son.’
‘Oh!’ says Mr Bucket, pausing, with
his finger at his ear. ‘Come, I'll take YOU.’
He completes his observations as quietly and
carefully as he has carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he
found it, glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the
street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir Leicester's
room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest coach- stand, picks out the h=
orse
for his money, and directs to be driven to the shooting gallery. Mr Bucket =
does
not claim to be a scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little mone=
y on
the principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of t=
he
subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he knows him.
His knowledge is not at fault in the present
instance. Clattering over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully
bringing his keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in=
the
‘Unbear him half a moment to freshen him=
up,
and I'll be back.’
He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the
trooper smoking his pipe.
‘I thought I should, George, after what =
you
have gone through, my lad. I haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to s=
ave
a woman. Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died--that was the name,=
I
know--all right--where does she live?’
The trooper has just come from there and gives=
him
the address, near Oxford Street.
‘You won't repent it, George. Good night=
!’
He is off again, with an impression of having =
seen
Phil sitting by the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops aw=
ay
again, and gets out in a cloud of steam again.
Mr Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, =
is
just going to bed, rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the
bell, and comes down to the door in his dressing-gown.
‘Don't be alarmed, sir.’ In a mome=
nt
his visitor is confidential with him in the hall, has shut the door, and st=
ands
with his hand upon the lock. ‘I've had the pleasure of seeing you bef=
ore.
Inspector Bucket. Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson's.
Found it myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour =
ago.
Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady Dedlock?’=
;
‘Yes.’
‘There has been a discovery there to-day.
Family affairs have come out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a
fit--apoplexy or paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time h=
as
been lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for him
that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!’
Mr Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he
thinks.
‘I don't know. It looks like suicide.
Anyways, there's more and more danger, every minute, of its drawing to that.
I'd give a hundred pound an hour to have got the start of the present time.
Now, Mr Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow
her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have money and
full power, but I want something else. I want Miss Summerson.’
Mr Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, ̵=
6;Miss
Summerson?’
‘Now, Mr Jarndyce’--Mr Bucket has =
read
his face with the greatest attention all along--’I speak to you as a
gentleman of a humane heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't
often happen. If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever =
you
couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the time. Eigh=
t or
ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound apiece at least, have been
lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am charged to find her. I am Inspect=
or
Bucket. Besides all the rest that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she
believes, suspicion of murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignoran=
ce
of what Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driv=
en
to desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering=
to
the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for--I ask no
question, and I say no more than that--she will give me credit for being
friendly. Let me come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of
putting that young lady for'ard, and I'll save her and prevail with her if =
she
is alive. Let me come up with her alone--a hard matter--and I'll do my best,
but I don't answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's getting on for
one o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth a
thousand pound now instead of a hundred.’
This is all true, and the pressing nature of t=
he
case cannot be questioned. Mr Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he sp=
eaks
to Miss Summerson. Mr Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual principl=
e,
does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping his man in sight=
. So
he remains, dodging and lurking about in the gloom of the staircase while t=
hey
confer. In a very little time Mr Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss
Summerson will join him directly and place herself under his protection to
accompany him where he pleases. Mr Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approv=
al
and awaits her coming at the door.
There he mounts a high tower in his mind and l=
ooks
out far and wide. Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the
streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under
haystacks. But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries=
he
perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by
the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tid=
e, more
solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention.
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If=
, as
he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an
enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the
night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he
descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale
blue flare, where the straw- roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks=
are
made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard fro=
zen
and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an
instrument of human torture--traversing this deserted, blighted spot there =
is a
lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by
the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the fi=
gure
of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came
through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my
guardian knocked at the door of my room and begged me to get up directly. O=
n my
hurrying to speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a w=
ord
or two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester
Dedlock's. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door who w=
as
empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of affectionate protection
and forgiveness if he could possibly find her, and that I was sought for to
accompany him in the hope that my entreaties might prevail upon her if his
failed. Something to this general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into
such a tumult of alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effo=
rt I
could make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to reco=
ver
my right mind until hours had passed.
But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously wit=
hout
waking Charley or any one and went down to Mr Bucket, who was the person
entrusted with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and
also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr Bucket, in a =
low
voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to me in the hall a letter
that my mother had left upon her table; and I suppose within ten minutes of=
my
having been aroused I was sitting beside him, rolling swiftly through the
streets.
His manner was very keen, and yet considerate =
when
he explained to me that a great deal might depend on my being able to answe=
r,
without confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,
chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom he on=
ly
referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with her last, and h=
ow
she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I had satisfied him on th=
ese
points, he asked me particularly to consider--taking time to think--whether
within my knowledge there was any one, no matter where, in whom she might b=
e at
all likely to confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could th=
ink
of no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr Boythorn. He came i=
nto
my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of mentioning my mother=
's
name and with what my guardian had informed me of his engagement to her sis=
ter
and his unconscious connexion with her unhappy story.
My companion had stopped the driver while we h=
eld
this conversation, that we might the better hear each other. He now told hi=
m to
go on again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few mome=
nts,
that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite willing to tell me
what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough to understand it.
We had not driven very far from our lodgings w=
hen
we stopped in a by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr
Bucket took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now p=
ast
one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police officers, looking in
their perfectly neat uniform not at all like people who were up all night, =
were
quietly writing at a desk; and the place seemed very quiet altogether, exce=
pt
for some beating and calling out at distant doors underground, to which nob=
ody
paid any attention.
A third man in uniform, whom Mr Bucket called = and to whom he whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advis= ed together while one wrote from Mr Bucket's subdued dictation. It was a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr Bucket brought it= to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was very accurate indeed.<= o:p>
The second officer, who had attended to it
closely, then copied it out and called in another man in uniform (there were
several in an outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this w=
as
done with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet nobo=
dy
was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its travels, the=
two
officers resumed their former quiet work of writing with neatness and care.=
Mr
Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the soles of his boots, first one and t=
hen
the other, at the fire.
‘Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson=
?’
he asked me as his eyes met mine. ‘It's a desperate sharp night for a
young lady to be out in.’
I told him I cared for no weather and was warm=
ly
clothed.
‘It may be a long job,’ he observe=
d; ‘but
so that it ends well, never mind, miss.’
‘I pray to heaven it may end well!’
said I.
He nodded comfortingly. ‘You see, whatev=
er
you do, don't you go and fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for
anything that may happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for m=
e,
the better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baro=
net.’
He was really very kind and gentle, and as he
stood before the fire warming his boots and rubbing his face with his
forefinger, I felt a confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was =
not
yet a quarter to two when I heard horses' feet and wheels outside. ‘N=
ow,
Miss Summerson,’ said he, ‘we are off, if you please!’
He gave me his arm, and the two officers
courteously bowed me out, and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche wi=
th a
postilion and post horses. Mr Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on =
the
box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then handed=
him
up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a few directions to=
the
driver, we rattled away.
I was far from sure that I was not in a dream.=
We
rattled with great rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon
lost all idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the
river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside, dense
neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and basins, high p=
iles
of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships. At length we stopped at t=
he
corner of a little slimy turning, which the wind from the river, rushing up=
it,
did not purify; and I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in
conference with several men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors=
. Against
the mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I could
discern the words, ‘Found Drowned’; and this and an inscription
about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in our vis=
it
to that place.
I had no need to remind myself that I was not
there by the indulgence of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties=
of
the search, or to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet,
but what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still it =
was
like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long swollen sodden
boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat and whispered with Mr
Bucket, who went away with him down some slippery steps--as if to look at
something secret that he had to show. They came back, wiping their hands up=
on
their coats, after turning over something wet; but thank God it was not wha=
t I
feared!
After some further conference, Mr Bucket (whom
everybody seemed to know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and
left me in the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses =
to
warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it made, a=
nd I
could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little rush towards me. =
It
never did so--and I thought it did so, hundreds of times, in what can have =
been
at the most a quarter of an hour, and probably was less--but the thought
shuddered through me that it would cast my mother at the horses' feet.
Mr Bucket came out again, exhorting the others=
to
be vigilant, darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. ‘Don't
you be alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here,’ =
he
said, turning to me. ‘I only want to have everything in train and to =
know
that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!’
We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not
that I had taken note of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mi=
nd,
but judging from the general character of the streets. We called at another
office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During the whol=
e of
this time, and during the whole search, my companion, wrapped up on the box,
never relaxed in his vigilance a single moment; but when we crossed the bri=
dge
he seemed, if possible, to be more on the alert than before. He stood up to
look over the parapet, he alighted and went back after a shadowy female fig=
ure
that flitted past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water wit=
h a
face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look, so
overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat lines of
shore--so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of substance and sha=
dow;
so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it many times since then, by sunl=
ight
and by moonlight, but never free from the impressions of that journey. In my
memory the lights upon the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind =
is
eddying round the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are
whirling on, and the light of the carriage- lamps reflected back looks pale=
ly
in upon me--a face rising out of the dreaded water.
Clattering and clattering through the empty
streets, we came at length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and be=
gan
to leave the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way =
to
Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we changed and =
went
on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country was white with snow, thou=
gh
none was falling then.
‘An old acquaintance of yours, this road,
Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Bucket cheerfully.
‘Yes,’ I returned. ‘Have you
gathered any intelligence?’
‘None that can be quite depended on as y=
et,’
he answered, ‘but it's early times as yet.’
He had gone into every late or early public-ho=
use
where there was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being t=
hen
much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the turnpike- keepe=
rs.
I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money, and making himself
agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he took his seat upon the box
again, his face resumed its watchful steady look, and he always said to the
driver in the same business tone, ‘Get on, my lad!’
With all these stoppages, it was between five =
and
six o'clock and we were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came =
out
of one of these houses and handed me in a cup of tea.
‘Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you
good. You're beginning to get more yourself now, ain't you?’
I thanked him and said I hoped so.
‘You was what you may call stunned at fi=
rst,’
he returned; ‘and Lord, no wonder! Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all
right. She's on ahead.’
I don't know what joyful exclamation I made or=
was
going to make, but he put up his finger and I stopped myself.
‘Passed through here on foot this evening
about eight or nine. I heard of her first at the archway toll, over at
Highgate, but couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off.
Picked her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us
now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you wasn't bro=
ught
up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can catch half a crown in y=
our
t'other hand. One, two, three, and there you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop=
!’
We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a li=
ttle
before day, when I was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurre=
nces
of the night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the
carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready, my
companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.
‘As this is your regular abode, Miss
Summerson, you see,’ he observed, ‘I should like to know whether
you've been asked for by any stranger answering the description, or whether=
Mr
Jarndyce has. I don't much expect it, but it might be.’
As we ascended the hill, he looked about him w=
ith
a sharp eye--the day was now breaking--and reminded me that I had come down=
it
one night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor=
Jo,
whom he called Toughey.
I wondered how he knew that.
‘When you passed a man upon the road, ju=
st
yonder, you know,’ said Mr Bucket.
Yes, I remembered that too, very well.
‘That was me,’ said Mr Bucket.
Seeing my surprise, he went on, ‘I drove
down in a gig that afternoon to look after that boy. You might have heard my
wheels when you came out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you=
and
your little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an inqu=
iry
or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he was in and was
coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I observed you bringing =
him
home here.’
‘Had he committed any crime?’ I as=
ked.
‘None was charged against him,’ sa=
id Mr
Bucket, coolly lifting off his hat, ‘but I suppose he wasn't
over-particular. No. What I wanted him for was in connexion with keeping th=
is
very matter of Lady Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free =
than
welcome as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceas=
ed Mr
Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have him playing
those games. So having warned him out of London, I made an afternoon of it =
to
warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and go farther from it, and
maintain a bright look-out that I didn't catch him coming back again.’=
;
‘Poor creature!’ said I.
‘Poor enough,’ assented Mr Bucket,=
‘and
trouble enough, and well enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was
regularly turned on my back when I found him taken up by your establishment=
, I
do assure you.’
I asked him why. ‘Why, my dear?’ s=
aid Mr
Bucket. ‘Naturally there was no end to his tongue then. He might as w=
ell
have been born with a yard and a half of it, and a remnant over.’
Although I remember this conversation now, my =
head
was in confusion at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than
enable me to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.
With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of indiffere=
nt
things, while his face was busy with the one object that we had in view. He
still pursued this subject as we turned in at the garden-gate.
‘Ah!’ said Mr Bucket. ‘Here =
we
are, and a nice retired place it is. Puts a man in mind of the country hous=
e in
the Woodpecker- tapping, that was known by the smoke which so gracefully cu=
rled.
They're early with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But wh=
at
you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see 'em; y=
ou
never know what they're up to if you don't know that. And another thing, my
dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the kitchen-door, you give that
young man in charge on suspicion of being secreted in a dwelling-house with=
an
unlawful purpose.’
We were now in front of the house; he looked
attentively and closely at the gravel for footprints before he raised his e=
yes
to the windows.
‘Do you generally put that elderly young
gentleman in the same room when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?’=
; he
inquired, glancing at Mr Skimpole's usual chamber.
‘You know Mr Skimpole!’ said I.
‘What do you call him again?’ retu=
rned
Mr Bucket, bending down his ear. ‘Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered
what his name might be. Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?=
217;
‘Harold,’ I told him.
‘Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harol=
d,’
said Mr Bucket, eyeing me with great expression.
‘He is a singular character,’ said=
I.
‘No idea of money,’ observed Mr
Bucket. ‘He takes it, though!’
I involuntarily returned for answer that I
perceived Mr Bucket knew him.
‘Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson,=
’
he replied. ‘Your mind will be all the better for not running on one
point too continually, and I'll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed
out to me where Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the do=
or
and ask for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first=
, if
any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at that win=
dow
where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I have had a look at h=
im,
thinks I, you're the man for me. So I smoothed him down a bit about not wan=
ting
to disturb the family after they was gone to bed and about its being a thin=
g to
be regretted that charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then,
when I pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote
well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without causing any
noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows in the gayest way,
'It's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my friend, because I'm a mere ch=
ild
in such matters and have no idea of money.' Of course I understood what his
taking it so easy meant; and being now quite sure he was the man for me, I
wrapped the note round a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laug=
hs
and beams, and looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'But I don't know t=
he
value of these things. What am I to DO with this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I.
'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right change, I
shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord, you never saw such a face as he
carried it with! Of course he told me where to find Toughey, and I found hi=
m.’
I regarded this as very treacherous on the par=
t of
Mr Skimpole towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his chil=
dish
innocence.
‘Bounds, my dear?’ returned Mr Buc=
ket.
‘Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson, I'll give you a piece of advice that yo=
ur
husband will find useful when you are happily married and have got a family
about you. Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can b=
e in
all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead cer=
tain
to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you 'In worldly
matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person is only a-crying off fr=
om
being held accountable and that you have got that person's number, and it's
Number One. Now, I am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when=
it
goes round a company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So=
's
this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I nev=
er
knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution to the unwar=
y,
my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell, and so go back to our
business.’
I believe it had not been for a moment out of =
his
mind, any more than it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The who=
le
household were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by my
inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be doubted that th=
is was
the truth.
‘Then, Miss Summerson,’ said my
companion, ‘we can't be too soon at the cottage where those brickmake=
rs
are to be found. Most inquiries there I leave to you, if you'll be so good =
as
to make 'em. The naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is =
your
own way.’
We set off again immediately. On arriving at t=
he
cottage, we found it shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighb=
ours
who knew me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear inform=
ed
me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in another hous=
e,
made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin of the piece of ground
where the kilns were and where the long rows of bricks were drying. We lost=
no
time in repairing to this place, which was within a few hundred yards; and =
as
the door stood ajar, I pushed it open.
There were only three of them sitting at
breakfast, the child lying asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the
mother of the dead child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me;
and the men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr Bucket follow=
ed
me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently knew him.
I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the
only name by which I knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat dow=
n on
a stool near the fire, and Mr Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now tha=
t I
had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I became
conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I
could not help bursting into tears.
‘Liz,’ said I, ‘I have come a
long way in the night and through the snow to inquire after a lady--’=
‘Who has been here, you know,’ Mr
Bucket struck in, addressing the whole group with a composed propitiatory f=
ace;
‘that's the lady the young lady means. The lady that was here last ni=
ght,
you know.’
‘And who told YOU as there was anybody h=
ere?’
inquired Jenny's husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen=
and
now measured him with his eye.
‘A person of the name of Michael Jackson,
with a blue welveteen waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl button=
s,’
Mr Bucket immediately answered.
‘He had as good mind his own business,
whoever he is,’ growled the man.
‘He's out of employment, I believe,̵=
7;
said Mr Bucket apologetically for Michael Jackson, ‘and so gets talki=
ng.’
The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood
faltering with her hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she
would have spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump of bre=
ad
and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck the handle of =
his
knife violently on the table and told her with an oath to mind HER own busi=
ness
at any rate and sit down.
‘I should like to have seen Jenny very m=
uch,’
said I, ‘for I am sure she would have told me all she could about this
lady, whom I am very anxious indeed--you cannot think how anxious--to overt=
ake.
Will Jenny be here soon? Where is she?’
The woman had a great desire to answer, but the
man, with another oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He l=
eft
it to Jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
latter turned his shaggy head towards me.
‘I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming i=
nto
my place, as you've heerd me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their plac=
es
be, and it's curious they can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine =
made
if I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much complain=
of
you as of some others, and I'm agreeable to make you a civil answer, though=
I
give notice that I'm not a-going to be drawed like a badger. Will Jenny be =
here
soon? No she won't. Where is she? She's gone up to Lunnun.’ ‘Did
she go last night?’ I asked.
‘Did she go last night? Ah! She went last
night,’ he answered with a sulky jerk of his head.
‘But was she here when the lady came? And
what did the lady say to her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray yo=
u to
be so kind as to tell me,’ said I, ‘for I am in great distress =
to
know.’
‘If my master would let me speak, and not
say a word of harm--’ the woman timidly began.
‘Your master,’ said her husband,
muttering an imprecation with slow emphasis, ‘will break your neck if=
you
meddle with wot don't concern you.’
After another silence, the husband of the abse=
nt
woman, turning to me again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingn=
ess.
‘Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes,=
she
wos here when the lady come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell y=
ou
wot the lady said to her. She said, 'You remember me as come one time to ta=
lk
to you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember me =
as
give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had left?' Ah, she
remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young lady up at the house =
now?
No, she warn't up at the house now. Well, then, lookee here. The lady was u=
pon
a journey all alone, strange as we might think it, and could she rest herse=
lf
where you're a setten for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then=
she
went--it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time by, nor =
yet
clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd. She went one way, and
Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun, and t'other went right from i=
t.
That's all about it. Ask this man. He heerd it all, and see it all. He know=
s.’
The other man repeated, ‘That's all about
it.’
‘Was the lady crying?’ I inquired.=
‘Devil a bit,’ returned the first =
man.
‘Her shoes was the worse, and her clothes was the worse, but she
warn't--not as I see.’
The woman sat with her arms crossed and her ey=
es
upon the ground. Her husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her=
and
kept his hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to exec=
ute
his threat if she disobeyed him.
‘I hope you will not object to my asking
your wife,’ said I, ‘how the lady looked.’
‘Come, then!’ he gruffly cried to =
her.
‘You hear what she says. Cut it short and tell her.’
‘Bad,’ replied the woman. ‘P=
ale
and exhausted. Very bad.’
‘Did she speak much?’
‘Not much, but her voice was hoarse.R=
17;
She answered, looking all the while at her hus=
band
for leave.
‘Was she faint?’ said I. ‘Did
she eat or drink here?’
‘Go on!’ said the husband in answe=
r to
her look. ‘Tell her and cut it short.’
‘She had a little water, miss, and Jenny
fetched her some bread and tea. But she hardly touched it.’
‘And when she went from here,’ I w=
as
proceeding, when Jenny's husband impatiently took me up.
‘When she went from here, she went right
away nor'ard by the high road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if =
it
warn't so. Now, there's the end. That's all about it.’
I glanced at my companion, and finding that he=
had
already risen and was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told =
me,
and took my leave. The woman looked full at Mr Bucket as he went out, and he
looked full at her.
‘Now, Miss Summerson,’ he said to =
me
as we walked quickly away. ‘They've got her ladyship's watch among 'e=
m.
That's a positive fact.’
‘You saw it?’ I exclaimed.
‘Just as good as saw it,’ he retur=
ned.
‘Else why should he talk about his 'twenty minutes past' and about his
having no watch to tell the time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut h=
is
time so fine as that. If he comes to half-hours, it's as much as HE does. N=
ow,
you see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think she
gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should she give it =
him
for?’
He repeated this question to himself several t=
imes
as we hurried on, appearing to balance between a variety of answers that ar=
ose
in his mind.
‘If time could be spared,’ said Mr
Bucket, ‘which is the only thing that can't be spared in this case, I
might get it out of that woman; but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to
under present circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, a=
nd
any fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and scarred =
and
bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that ill uses her thro=
ugh
thick and thin. There's something kept back. It's a pity but what we had se=
en
the other woman.’
I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very g=
rateful,
and I felt sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
‘It's possible, Miss Summerson,’ s=
aid Mr
Bucket, pondering on it, ‘that her ladyship sent her up to London with
some word for you, and it's possible that her husband got the watch to let =
her
go. It don't come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the
cards. Now, I don't take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don't see my way to the usefulness=
of
it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is for'ard--straight
ahead--and keeping everything quiet!’
We called at home once more that I might send a
hasty note to my guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the
carriage. The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
were on the road again in a few minutes.
It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now
snowed hard. The air was so thick with the darkness of the day and the dens=
ity
of the fall that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Altho=
ugh
it was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned--w=
ith
a sound as if it were a beach of small shells --under the hoofs of the hors=
es
into mire and water. They sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile toget=
her,
and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them. One horse fell th=
ree
times in this first stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver
had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I
grew so nervous under those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled =
that
I had an unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
companion's better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this time, k=
ept
fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up=
and
down at every house we came to, addressing people whom he had never beheld
before as old acquaintances, running in to warm himself at every fire he sa=
w,
talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with
every waggoner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll- taker, yet never seeming=
to
lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady f=
ace
and his business-like ‘Get on, my lad!’
When we were changing horses the next time, he
came from the stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping
off him--plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been d=
oing
frequently since we left Saint Albans--and spoke to me at the carriage side=
.
‘Keep up your spirits. It's certainly tr=
ue
that she came on here, Miss Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by =
this
time, and the dress has been seen here.’
‘Still on foot?’ said I.
‘Still on foot. I think the gentleman you
mentioned must be the point she's aiming at, and yet I don't like his living
down in her own part of the country neither.’
‘I know so little,’ said I. ‘=
;There
may be some one else nearer here, of whom I never heard.’
‘That's true. But whatever you do, don't=
you
fall a-crying, my dear; and don't you worry yourself no more than you can h=
elp.
Get on, my lad!’
The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thi=
ck
mist came on early, and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads=
I
had never seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had been o=
ut,
it presented itself as an indefinite period of great duration, and I seemed=
, in
a strange way, never to have been free from the anxiety under which I then
laboured.
As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings tha=
t my
companion lost confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside
people, but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of one l=
ong
weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and ot=
her
vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had seen in other coaches a=
nd
vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He alwa=
ys
gave me a reassuring beck of his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got up=
on
the box again, but he seemed perplexed now when he said, ‘Get on, my =
lad!’
At last, when we were changing, he told me tha=
t he
had lost the track of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It w=
as
nothing, he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable
manner, and we had not come upon it since. This corroborated the apprehensi=
ons
I had formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the
carriage at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time while he explored
them. But I was not to be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as=
not
that the next stage might set us right again.
The next stage, however, ended as that one end=
ed;
we had no new clue. There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comforta=
ble
substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before I knew
it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the carriage-door,
entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the horses were making rea=
dy,
I thought it would be uncharitable to refuse. They took me upstairs to a wa=
rm
room and left me there.
It was at the corner of the house, I remember,
looking two ways. On one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the
ostlers were unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy
carriage, and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees. Their
branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off in wet heaps
while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and its bleakness was
enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the
window- pane. As I looked among the stems of the trees and followed the
discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it and
undermining it, I thought of the motherly face brightly set off by daughters
that had just now welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to
die.
I was frightened when I found them all about m=
e,
but I remembered that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and =
that
was some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the fire, =
and
then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no further to-night, but
must go to bed. But this put me into such a tremble lest they should detain=
me
there that she soon recalled her words and compromised for a rest of half an
hour.
A good endearing creature she was. She and her
three fair girls, all so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled
fowl, while Mr Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do=
it
when a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was =
very
unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast and some hot
negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made some recompense.
Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end t=
he
carriage came rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed,
refreshed, comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, the
youngest daughter--a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the first
married, they had told me--got upon the carriage step, reached in, and kiss=
ed
me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think of her to this hour =
as
my friend.
The transparent windows with the fire and ligh=
t,
looking so bright and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon g=
one,
and again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with toil
enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had been, and the
stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the box--I had thought at
the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw him standing at a great fir=
e in
a comfortable cloud of tobacco--was as vigilant as ever and as quickly down=
and
up again when we came to any human abode or any human creature. He had ligh=
ted
his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had
lamps to the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see t=
hat
I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head, but I ne=
ver
closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
We came to the end of the stage, and still the
lost trace was not recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to
change, but I knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers =
that
he had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back in =
my
seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an excited and qu=
ite
different man.
‘What is it?’ said I, starting. =
8216;Is
she here?’
‘No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear.
Nobody's here. But I've got it!’
The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in=
his
hair, lying in ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get
his breath before he spoke to me.
‘Now, Miss Summerson,’ said he,
beating his finger on the apron, ‘don't you be disappointed at what I=
'm
a-going to do. You know me. I'm Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We'=
ve
come a long way; never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up!
Quick!’
There was a commotion in the yard, and a man c=
ame
running out of the stables to know if he meant up or down.
‘Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? U=
p!’
‘Up?’ said I, astonished. ‘To
London! Are we going back?’
‘Miss Summerson,’ he answered, =
216;back.
Straight back as a die. You know me. Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other=
, by
G--’
‘The other?’ I repeated. ‘Wh=
o?’
‘You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll
follow her. Bring those two pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some =
of
you!’
‘You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not abandon her on such a night and in such a state of = mind as I know her to be in!’ said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.<= o:p>
‘You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'=
ll
follow the other. Look alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in t=
he
saddle to the next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order
four on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!’
These orders and the way in which he ran about=
the
yard urging them caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewilde=
ring
to me than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted=
man
galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to with great sp=
eed.
‘My dear,’ said Mr Bucket, jumping=
to
his seat and looking in again, ‘--you'll excuse me if I'm too
familiar--don't you fret and worry yourself no more than you can help. I say
nothing else at present; but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?’
I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far mo=
re
capable than I of deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this w=
as
right? Could I not go forward by myself in search of--I grasped his hand ag=
ain
in my distress and whispered it to him--of my own mother.
‘My dear,’ he answered, ‘I k=
now,
I know, and would I put you wrong, do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you =
know
me, don't you?’
What could I say but yes!
‘Then you keep up as good a heart as you
can, and you rely upon me for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet. Now, are you right there?’
‘All right, sir!’
‘Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads=
!’
We were again upon the melancholy road by whic=
h we
had come, tearing up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn u=
p by
a waterwheel.
Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the
Dedlock town house carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal
grandeur. There are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows =
of
the hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky; a=
nd
in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself exotically to
the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of doors. It is given out =
that
my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presentl=
y.
Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go do=
wn
into Lincolnshire. It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It kn=
ows
that that poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hear=
s,
my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of five mil=
es
round quite merry. Not to know that there is something wrong at the Dedlock=
s'
is to augur yourself unknown. One of the peachy-cheeked charmers with the
skeleton throats is already apprised of all the principal circumstances that
will come out before the Lords on Sir Leicester's application for a bill of
divorce.
At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers and at Sh=
een
and Gloss's the mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of t=
he
age, the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,
albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured there as
any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly understood in this n=
ew
fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter. ‘Our people, Mr Jones,=
’
said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in question on engaging him, ‘our =
people,
sir, are sheep--mere sheep. Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest
follow. Keep those two or three in your eye, Mr Jones, and you have the flo=
ck.’
So, likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing where=
to
have the fashionable people and how to bring what they (Sheen and Gloss) ch=
oose
into fashion. On similar unerring principles, Mr Sladdery the librarian, and
indeed the great farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, ‘Why
yes, sir, there certainly
Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will n=
ot
go down into Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards'
time, it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr Stables, whi=
ch
bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long rested his
colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the effect that although =
he
always knew she was the best-groomed woman in the stud, he had no idea she =
was
a bolter. It is immensely received in turf-circles.
At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she
has often graced, and among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she =
is
still the prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was =
it?
How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the genteelest sl=
ang
in vogue, with the last new word, the last new manner, the last new drawl, =
and
the perfection of polite indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is
that it is found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who
never came out before--positively say things! William Buffy carries one of
these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House, where the
Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to keep men together w=
ho
want to be off, with such effect that the Speaker (who has had it privately
insinuated into his own ear under the corner of his wig) cries, ‘Orde=
r at
the bar!’ three times without making an impression.
And not the least amazing circumstance connect=
ed
with her being vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confine=
s of
Mr Sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know not=
hing
about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend that she is th=
eir
topic too, and to retail her at second- hand with the last new word and the
last new manner, and the last new drawl, and the last new polite indifferen=
ce,
and all the rest of it, all at second-hand but considered equal to new in
inferior systems and to fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art,=
or
science among these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble
sisters on such majestic crutches!
So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock
mansion. How within it?
Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a
little, though with difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence
and to rest, and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his =
old
enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he seems =
to
fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be moved out nearer=
to
the window when he heard it was such inclement weather, and his head to be =
so
adjusted that he could see the driving snow and sleet. He watches it as it
falls, throughout the whole wintry day.
Upon the least noise in the house, which is ke=
pt
hushed, his hand is at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, kno=
ws
what he would write and whispers, ‘No, he has not come back yet, Sir
Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a little ti=
me
gone yet.’
He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at =
the
sleet and snow again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so t=
hick
and fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy whi=
rl
of white flakes and icy blots.
He began to look at them as soon as it was lig= ht. The day is not yet far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself. He wr= ites to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs Rouncewell with a heavy heart obeys.<= o:p>
‘For I dread, George,’ the old lady
says to her son, who waits below to keep her company when she has a little
leisure, ‘I dread, my dear, that my Lady will never more set foot wit=
hin
these walls.’
‘That's a bad presentiment, mother.̵=
7;
‘Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wol=
d,
my dear.’
‘That's worse. But why, mother?’
‘When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, s=
he
looked to me--and I may say at me too--as if the step on the Ghost's Walk h=
ad
almost walked her down.’
‘Come, come! You alarm yourself with
old-story fears, mother.’
‘No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's g=
oing
on for sixty year that I have been in this family, and I never had any fears
for it before. But it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family =
is
breaking up.’
‘I hope not, mother.’
‘I am thankful I have lived long enough = to be with Sir Leicester in this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too = old nor too useless to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be. But the step on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; = it has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on.’<= o:p>
‘Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope =
not.’
‘Ah, so do I, George,’ the old lady
returns, shaking her head and parting her folded hands. ‘But if my fe=
ars
come true, and he has to know it, who will tell him!’
‘Are these her rooms?’
‘These are my Lady's rooms, just as she =
left
them.’
‘Why, now,’ says the trooper, glan=
cing
round him and speaking in a lower voice, ‘I begin to understand how y=
ou
come to think as you do think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them w=
hen
they are fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,=
and
that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows where.̵=
7;
He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow =
the
great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully
whisper what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a
hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment, where Mr
Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces of her dresses a=
nd
her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect them when they were a
portion of herself, have a desolate and vacant air. Dark and cold as the wi=
ntry
day is, it is darker and colder in these deserted chambers than in many a h=
ut
that will barely exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in=
the
grates and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that
let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is a hea=
vy
cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.
The old housekeeper and her son remain until t=
he
preparations are complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has take=
n Mrs
Rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge pots,
however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent comforts to the
invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not being supposed to know (=
and
indeed not knowing) what is the matter, has found it a ticklish task to off=
er
appropriate observations and consequently has supplied their place with
distracting smoothings of the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe,
vigilant peeping at her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to her=
self
of, ‘He is asleep.’ In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir
Leicester has indignantly written on the slate, ‘I am not.’
Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside =
to
the quaint old housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,
sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and liste=
ns
for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his old servant,
looking as if she had stepped out of an old picture-frame to attend a summo=
ned
Dedlock to another world, the silence is fraught with echoes of her own wor=
ds, ‘Who
will tell him!’
He has been under his valet's hands this morni=
ng
to be made presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allo=
w.
He is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual manner, h=
is
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. He is v=
ery
ill, but he makes his present stand against distress of mind and body most
courageously.
The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly
girls who cannot long continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by =
the
dragon Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of
undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by any o=
ther
process than conversation, she compliments Mrs Rouncewell on her son, decla=
ring
that he positively is one of the finest figures she ever saw and as soldier=
ly a
looking person, she should think, as what's his name, her favourite Life
Guardsman --the man she dotes on, the dearest of creatures--who was killed =
at
Waterloo.
Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much
surprise and stares about him in such a confused way that Mrs Rouncewell fe=
els
it necessary to explain.
‘Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest s= on, Sir Leicester, but my youngest. I have found him. He has come home.’<= o:p>
Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry.=
‘George?
Your son George come home, Mrs Rouncewell?’
The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. ‘Tha=
nk
God. Yes, Sir Leicester.’
Does this discovery of some one lost, this ret=
urn
of some one so long gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hop=
es?
Does he think, ‘Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely a=
fter
this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in his?̵=
7;
It is of no use entreating him; he is determin=
ed
to speak now, and he does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligib=
ly
enough to be understood.
‘Why did you not tell me, Mrs Rouncewell=
?’
‘It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicest=
er,
and I doubted your being well enough to be talked to of such things.’=
Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with=
her
little scream that nobody was to have known of his being Mrs Rouncewell's s=
on
and that she was not to have told. But Mrs Rouncewell protests, with warmth
enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir Leice=
ster
as soon as he got better.
‘Where is your son George, Mrs Rouncewel=
l?’
asks Sir Leicester,
Mrs Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his
disregard of the doctor's injunctions, replies, in London.
‘Where in London?’
Mrs Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he=
is
in the house.
‘Bring him here to my room. Bring him
directly.’
The old lady can do nothing but go in search of
him. Sir Leicester, with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself=
a
little to receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falli=
ng
sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity of str=
aw
has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises there, and she mig=
ht
be driven to the door perhaps without his hearing wheels.
He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his
newer and minor surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her
trooper son. Mr George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow, squ=
ares
his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily ashamed of hims=
elf.
‘Good heaven, and it is really George
Rouncewell!’ exclaims Sir Leicester. ‘Do you remember me, Georg=
e?’
The trooper needs to look at him and to separa=
te
this sound from that sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this=
and
being a little helped by his mother, he replies, ‘I must have a very =
bad
memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you.’
‘When I look at you, George Rouncewell,&=
#8217;
Sir Leicester observes with difficulty, ‘I see something of a boy at
Chesney Wold--I remember well--very well.’
He looks at the trooper until tears come into =
his
eyes, and then he looks at the sleet and snow again.
‘I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester,’ says the trooper, ‘but would you accept of my arms to raise you up? Y= ou would lie easier, Sir Leicester, if you would allow me to move you.’<= o:p>
‘If you please, George Rouncewell; if you
will be so good.’
The trooper takes him in his arms like a child,
lightly raises him, and turns him with his face more towards the window. =
8216;Thank
you. You have your mother's gentleness,’ returns Sir Leicester, ̵=
6;and
your own strength. Thank you.’
He signs to him with his hand not to go away.
George quietly remains at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.
‘Why did you wish for secrecy?’ It
takes Sir Leicester some time to ask this.
‘Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir
Leicester, and I--I should still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so
indisposed--which I hope you will not be long--I should still hope for the
favour of being allowed to remain unknown in general. That involves
explanations not very hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and =
not
very creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of
subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir Leicester, tha=
t I
am not much to boast of.’
‘You have been a soldier,’ observes
Sir Leicester, ‘and a faithful one.’
George makes his military bow. ‘As far as
that goes, Sir Leicester, I have done my duty under discipline, and it was =
the
least I could do.’
‘You find me,’ says Sir Leicester,
whose eyes are much attracted towards him, ‘far from well, George
Rouncewell.’
‘I am very sorry both to hear it and to =
see
it, Sir Leicester.’
‘I am sure you are. No. In addition to my
older malady, I have had a sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens,=
8217;
making an endeavour to pass one hand down one side, ‘and confuses,=
217;
touching his lips.
George, with a look of assent and sympathy, ma=
kes
another bow. The different times when they were both young men (the trooper
much the younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold
arise before them both and soften both.
Sir Leicester, evidently with a great
determination to say, in his own manner, something that is on his mind befo=
re
relapsing into silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little m=
ore.
George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and places him=
as
he desires to be. ‘Thank you, George. You are another self to me. You
have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold, George. You are familiar t=
o me
in these strange circumstances, very familiar.’ He has put Sir
Leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder in lifting him up, and Sir Leices=
ter
is slow in drawing it away again as he says these words.
‘I was about to add,’ he presently
goes on, ‘I was about to add, respecting this attack, that it was
unfortunately simultaneous with a slight misunderstanding between my Lady a=
nd
myself. I do not mean that there was any difference between us (for there h=
as
been none), but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances
important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while, of my
Lady's society. She has found it necessary to make a journey--I trust will
shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible? The words are not
quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing them.’
Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in tru=
th
he delivers himself with far greater plainness than could have been supposed
possible a minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anx=
ious
and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his purpo=
se
enables him to make it.
‘Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in
your presence--and in the presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs
Rouncewell, whose truth and fidelity no one can question, and in the presen=
ce
of her son George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth =
in
the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold--in case I should relapse, in case=
I
should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech and the power of
writing, though I hope for better things--’
The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia=
in
the greatest agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper =
with
his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.
‘Therefore I desire to say, and to call =
you
all to witness-- beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly--that I =
am
on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever of
complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest affection for her,
and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to herself, and to every one. If
you ever say less than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to =
me.’
Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will
observe his injunctions to the letter.
‘My Lady is too high in position, too
handsome, too accomplished, too superior in most respects to the best of th=
ose
by whom she is surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare sa=
y.
Let it be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound min=
d,
memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made in her favou=
r. I
abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am on unaltered terms with
her, and I recall--having the full power to do it if I were so disposed, as=
you
see--no act I have done for her advantage and happiness.’
His formal array of words might have at any ot=
her
time, as it has often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is
serious and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant
shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own pride =
for
her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing less worthy can be
seen through the lustre of such qualities in the commonest mechanic, nothing
less worthy can be seen in the best-born gentleman. In such a light both as=
pire
alike, both rise alike, both children of the dust shine equally.
Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head
back on his pillows and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he
again resumes his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled
sounds. In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of the=
ir
acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him. Nothing h=
as
been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or two backward to be
out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his mother's chair.
The day is now beginning to decline. The mist =
and
the sleet into which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the b=
laze
begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The gloom
augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the pertinacious oil
lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their source of life half fro=
zen
and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like fiery fish out of water--as they ar=
e.
The world, which has been rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, =
‘to
inquire,’ begins to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its
dear friend with all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless,
uneasy, and in great pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined
aptitude for doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again,=
for
it is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will be a=
ll
night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not dark enough yet=
.
His old housekeeper is the first to understand
that he is striving to uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growi=
ng
late.
‘Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master,=
’
she softly whispers, ‘I must, for your own good, and my duty, take the
freedom of begging and praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkn=
ess
watching and waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtain=
s,
and light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The
church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and the n=
ight
will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just the same.’=
‘I know it, Mrs Rouncewell, but I am
weak--and he has been so long gone.’
‘Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not
twenty-four hours yet.’
‘But that is a long time. Oh, it is a lo=
ng
time!’
He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.=
She knows that this is not a period for bringi=
ng
the rough light upon him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even =
by
her. Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then ge=
ntly
begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at the dark window
looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered self-command, ‘As y=
ou
say, Mrs Rouncewell, it is no worse for being confessed. It is getting late,
and they are not come. Light the room!’ When it is lighted and the
weather shut out, it is only left to him to listen.
But they find that however dejected and ill he=
is,
he brightens when a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her r=
ooms
and being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as it=
is,
these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.
The corporation of servants are dismissed to b= ed (not unwilling to go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs Rounce= well and George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily on= --or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and three o'clock--= they find a restless craving on him to know more about the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best report he can make of the worst of nights, the sle= et still falling and even the stone footways lying ankle- deep in icy sludge.<= o:p>
Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on =
the
staircase--the second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a
cousinly room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester
banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard planted wi=
th
dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black tea--is a prey to horr=
ors
of many kinds. Not last nor least among them, possibly, is a horror of what=
may
befall her little income in the event, as she expresses it, ‘of anyth=
ing
happening’ to Sir Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thi=
ng
only; and that the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any
baronet in the known world.
An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia fi=
nds
she cannot go to bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but
must come forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her
fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost, particul=
arly
haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one who still does not
return. Solitude under such circumstances being not to be thought of, Volum=
nia
is attended by her maid, who, impressed from her own bed for that purpose,
extremely cold, very sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by =
circumstances
to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to nothing l=
ess
than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of countenance.
The periodical visits of the trooper to these
rooms, however, in the course of his patrolling is an assurance of protecti=
on
and company both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in
the small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make
some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divi=
de
their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues not wholly free f=
rom
acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock, sitting with her feet upon the fender,
was or was not falling into the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure=
) by
her guardian genius the maid.
‘How is Sir Leicester now, Mr George?=
217;
inquires Volumnia, adjusting her cowl over her head.
‘Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, mi=
ss.
He is very low and ill, and he even wanders a little sometimes.’
‘Has he asked for me?’ inquires
Volumnia tenderly.
‘Why, no, I can't say he has, miss. Not
within my hearing, that is to say.’
‘This is a truly sad time, Mr George.=
217;
‘It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better g=
o to
bed?’
‘You had a deal better go to bed, Miss
Dedlock,’ quoth the maid sharply.
But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked =
for,
she may be wanted at a moment's notice. She never should forgive herself =
8216;if
anything was to happen’ and she was not on the spot. She declines to
enter on the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, =
and
not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly declares
that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a merit of not hav=
ing ‘closed
an eye’--as if she had twenty or thirty--though it is hard to reconci=
le
this statement with her having most indisputably opened two within five
minutes.
But when it comes to four o'clock, and still t=
he
same blank, Volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to
strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for the
morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact, howsoever anxious =
to
remain upon the spot, it may be required of her, as an act of self-devotion=
, to
desert the spot. So when the trooper reappears with his, ‘Hadn't you
better go to bed, miss?’ and when the maid protests, more sharply than
before, ‘You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock!’ she me=
ekly
rises and says, ‘Do with me what you think best!’
Mr George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort=
her
on his arm to the door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly
thinks it best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordin=
gly,
these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the house to
himself.
There is no improvement in the weather. From t=
he
portico, from the eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and
pillar, drips the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the
lintels of the great door--under it, into the corners of the windows, into
every chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is falling
still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the skylight, and dri=
p,
drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's Walk, on the stone floor bel=
ow.
The trooper, his old recollections awakened by=
the
solitary grandeur of a great house--no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold--
goes up the stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm=
's
length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks, and of h=
is
rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so strangely brought
together across the wide intermediate space; thinking of the murdered man w=
hose
image is fresh in his mind; thinking of the lady who has disappeared from t=
hese
very rooms and the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of
the master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, ‘Who will tell
him!’ he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see
something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his hand
upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the darkness a=
bove
and below, while he goes up the great staircase again, blank as the oppress=
ive
silence.
‘All is still in readiness, George
Rouncewell?’
‘Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester.=
’
‘No word of any kind?’
The trooper shakes his head.
‘No letter that can possibly have been
overlooked?’
But he knows there is no such hope as that and
lays his head down without looking for an answer.
Very familiar to him, as he said himself some
hours ago, George Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the lo=
ng
remainder of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpres=
sed
wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first late bre=
ak
of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague, it sends=
a
warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, ‘Look
what I am bringing you who watch there! Who will tell him!’
It was three o'clock in the morning when the
houses outside London did at last begin to exclude the country and to close=
us
in with streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition t=
han
when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having
lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never slackened. It had o=
nly
been, as I thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, an=
d it
had often aided them. They had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had
been driven through streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and
become entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been
always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard any
variation in his cool, ‘Get on, my lads!’
The steadiness and confidence with which he had
directed our journey back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never
even stopped to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London.=
A
very few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we came,=
at
between three and four o'clock in the morning, into Islington.
I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety w=
ith
which I reflected all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and
farther behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be
right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following this wo=
man,
but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing it during the who=
le
journey. What was to ensue when we found her and what could compensate us f=
or
this loss of time were questions also that I could not possibly dismiss; my
mind was quite tortured by long dwelling on such reflections when we stoppe=
d.
We stopped in a high-street where there was a
coach-stand. My companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely cove=
red
with splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the carriage
itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take it, lifted me ou=
t of
it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from the rest.
‘Why, my dear!’ he said as he did
this. ‘How wet you are!’
I had not been conscious of it. But the melted
snow had found its way into the carriage, and I had got out two or three ti=
mes
when a fallen horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had
penetrated my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who kn=
ew
him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his stabl=
e,
whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it out and strew=
ed
it well about me, and I found it warm and comfortable.
‘Now, my dear,’ said Mr Bucket, wi=
th
his head in at the window after I was shut up. ‘We're a-going to mark
this person down. It may take a little time, but you don't mind that. You're
pretty sure that I've got a motive. Ain't you?’
I little thought what it was, little thought in
how short a time I should understand it better, but I assured him that I had
confidence in him.
‘So you may have, my dear,’ he
returned. ‘And I tell you what! If you only repose half as much
confidence in me as I repose in you after what I've experienced of you, tha=
t'll
do. Lord! You're no trouble at all. I never see a young woman in any statio=
n of
society--and I've seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have
conducted yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, =
you know,
that's what you are,’ said Mr Bucket warmly; ‘you're a pattern.=
’
I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to
have been no hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.
‘My dear,’ he returned, ‘whe=
n a
young lady is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's mild, that's all I
ask, and more than I expect. She then becomes a queen, and that's about what
you are yourself.’
With these encouraging words--they really were
encouraging to me under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon=
the
box, and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor ha=
ve
ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst stree=
ts
in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I was prepared for our
descending into a deeper complication of such streets, and we never failed =
to
do so.
Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare=
or
came to a larger building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stoppe=
d at
offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I saw him =
in
consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by an archway or at a
street corner and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. This w=
ould
attract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many insects, an=
d a fresh
consultation would be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search
within narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now
tell Mr Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go. At last=
we
stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one of these men, wh=
ich
I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of nodding from time to time.
When it was finished he came to me looking very busy and very attentive.
‘Now, Miss Summerson,’ he said to =
me, ‘you
won't be alarmed whatever comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to g=
ive
you any further caution than to tell you that we have marked this person do=
wn
and that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to a=
sk
such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?’
Of course I got out directly and took his arm.=
‘It ain't so easy to keep your feet,R=
17;
said Mr Bucket, ‘but take time.’
Although I looked about me confusedly and
hurriedly as we crossed the street, I thought I knew the place. ‘Are =
we
in Holborn?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Bucket. ‘Do y=
ou
know this turning?’
‘It looks like Chancery Lane.’
‘And was christened so, my dear,’ =
said
Mr Bucket.
We turned down it, and as we went shuffling
through the sleet, I heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in
silence and as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one com=
ing
towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood as=
ide
to give me room. In the same moment I heard an exclamation of wonder and my=
own
name from Mr Woodcourt. I knew his voice very well.
It was so unexpected and so--I don't know what=
to
call it, whether pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish
wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange country.=
‘My dear Miss Summerson, that you should=
be
out at this hour, and in such weather!’
He had heard from my guardian of my having been
called away on some uncommon business and said so to dispense with any
explanation. I told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--b=
ut
then I was obliged to look at my companion.
‘Why, you see, Mr Woodcourt’--he h=
ad
caught the name from me--’we are a-going at present into the next str=
eet.
Inspector Bucket.’
Mr Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, h=
ad
hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me. ‘That's a =
good
move, too,’ said Mr Bucket, assisting, ‘a very good move.’=
;
‘May I go with you?’ said Mr
Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me or to my companion.
‘Why, Lord!’ exclaimed Mr Bucket,
taking the answer on himself. ‘Of course you may.’ It was all s=
aid
in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in the cloak.
‘I have just left Richard,’ said Mr
Woodcourt. ‘I have been sitting with him since ten o'clock last night=
.’
‘Oh, dear me, he is ill!’
‘No, no, believe me; not ill, but not qu=
ite
well. He was depressed and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn
sometimes--and Ada sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her n=
ote
and came straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,=
and
Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I=
had
little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been fast
asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!’
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of t=
hem,
his unaffected devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew =
he
had inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate all
this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it had not
recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my
appearance: ‘I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred o=
ne!’
We now turned into another narrow street. R=
16;Mr
Woodcourt,’ said Mr Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along=
, ‘our
business takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr Snagsby's. What, =
you
know him, do you?’ He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
‘Yes, I know a little of him and have ca=
lled
upon him at this place.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mr Bucket. =
216;Then
you will be so good as to let me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment
while I go and have half a word with him?’
The last police-officer with whom he had confe=
rred
was standing silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in o=
n my
saying I heard some one crying.
‘Don't be alarmed, miss,’ he retur=
ned.
‘It's Snagsby's servant.’
‘Why, you see,’ said Mr Bucket, =
8216;the
girl's subject to fits, and has 'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary
circumstance it is, for I want certain information out of that girl, and she
must be brought to reason somehow.’
‘At all events, they wouldn't be up yet =
if
it wasn't for her, Mr Bucket,’ said the other man. ‘She's been =
at
it pretty well all night, sir.’
‘Well, that's true,’ he returned. =
‘My
light's burnt out. Show yours a moment.’
All this passed in a whisper a door or two from
the house in which I could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little r=
ound
of light produced for the purpose, Mr Bucket went up to the door and knocke=
d.
The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in, leaving us
standing in the street.
‘Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Woodcour=
t, ‘if
without obtruding myself on your confidence I may remain near you, pray let=
me
do so.’
‘You are truly kind,’ I answered. =
‘I
need wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if I keep any, it is anothe=
r's.’
‘I quite understand. Trust me, I will re=
main
near you only so long as I can fully respect it.’
‘I trust implicitly to you,’ I sai=
d. ‘I
know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise.’
After a short time the little round of light s=
hone
out again, and Mr Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. &=
#8216;Please
to come in, Miss Summerson,’ he said, ‘and sit down by the fire=
. Mr
Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a medical =
man.
Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her ro=
und.
She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want. It's not in her box, a=
nd I
think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she =
is
difficult to handle without hurting.’
We all three went into the house together;
although it was cold and raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In
the passage behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in=
a
grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke meekly.
‘Downstairs, if you please, Mr Bucket,=
8217;
said he. ‘The lady will excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our
workaday sitting-room. The back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carr=
ying
on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!’
We went downstairs, followed by Mr Snagsby, as=
I
soon found the little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire,=
was
Mrs Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
‘My little woman,’ said Mr Snagsby,
entering behind us, ‘to wave-- not to put too fine a point upon it, my
dear--hostilities for one single moment in the course of this prolonged nig=
ht,
here is Inspector Bucket, Mr Woodcourt, and a lady.’
She looked very much astonished, as she had re=
ason
for doing, and looked particularly hard at me.
‘My little woman,’ said Mr Snagsby,
sitting down in the remotest corner by the door, as if he were taking a
liberty, ‘it is not unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector
Bucket, Mr Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Str=
eet,
at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I was to be
informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather not be told.=
217;
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head
upon his hand, and I appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an
apology when Mr Bucket took the matter on himself.
‘Now, Mr Snagsby,’ said he, ‘=
;the
best thing you can do is to go along with Mr Woodcourt to look after your
Guster--’
‘My Guster, Mr Bucket!’ cried Mr
Snagsby. ‘Go on, sir, go on. I shall be charged with that next.’=
;
‘And to hold the candle,’ pursued =
Mr
Bucket without correcting himself, ‘or hold her, or make yourself use=
ful
in any way you're asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for
you're a man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of
heart that can feel for another. Mr Woodcourt, would you be so good as see =
to
her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me have it as soon as =
ever
you can?’
As they went out, Mr Bucket made me sit down i=
n a
corner by the fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon
the fender, talking all the time.
‘Don't you be at all put out, miss, by t=
he
want of a hospitable look from Mrs Snagsby there, because she's under a mis=
take
altogether. She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of=
her
generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going to
explain it to her.’ Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and
shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs Snagsby. ‘=
;Now,
the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman possessing what you m=
ay
call charms, you know--'Believe Me, if All Those Endearing,' and cetrer--yo=
u're
well acquainted with the song, because it's in vain for you to tell me that=
you
and good society are strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to
give you confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it.’
Mrs Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a
little and faltered, what did Mr Bucket mean.
‘What does Mr Bucket mean?’ he
repeated, and I saw by his face that all the time he talked he was listening
for the discovery of the letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then=
how
important it must be; ‘I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see
Othello acted. That's the tragedy for you.’
Mrs Snagsby consciously asked why.
‘Why?’ said Mr Bucket. ‘Beca=
use
you'll come to that if you don't look out. Why, at the very moment while I
speak, I know what your mind's not wholly free from respecting this young l=
ady.
But shall I tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call =
an
intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you come to
that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect where you saw me l=
ast,
and what was talked of in that circle. Don't you? Yes! Very well. This young
lady is that young lady.’
Mrs Snagsby appeared to understand the referen=
ce
better than I did at the time.
‘And Toughey--him as you call Jo--was mi=
xed
up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of =
was
mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more
knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr Tulkinghor=
n,
deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and the wh=
ole
bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. And yet a
married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers t=
oo),
and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I am ashame=
d of
you! (I expected Mr Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)’
Mrs Snagsby shook her head and put her
handkerchief to her eyes.
‘Is that all?’ said Mr Bucket
excitedly. ‘No. See what happens. Another person mixed up in that
business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here to-night an=
d is
seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant
there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do y=
ou
do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant--know=
ing
what she's subject to and what a little thing will bring 'em on--in that
surprising manner and with that severity that, by the Lord, she goes off and
keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl's words!’
He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I
involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But =
it
stopped. Mr Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away aga=
in.
‘Now, Mrs Snagsby, the only amends you c=
an
make,’ said Mr Bucket, rapidly glancing at it, ‘is to let me sp=
eak
a word to this young lady in private here. And if you know of any help that=
you
can give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest
and best!’ In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door. R=
16;Now
my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?’
‘Quite,’ said I. ‘Whose writ=
ing
is that?’
It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a cru=
shed
and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and
directed to me at my guardian's.
‘You know the hand,’ he said, R=
16;and
if you are firm enough to read it to me, do! But be particular to a word.=
8217;
It had been written in portions, at different
times. I read what follows:
‘I came to the cottage with two objects.
First, to see the dear one, if I could, once more--but only to see her--not=
to
speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other object, to elude
pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the mother for her share. The assistan=
ce
that she rendered me, she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for
the dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's consent I bough=
t,
but her help was freely given.’
‘'I came.' That was written,’ said=
my
companion, ‘when she rested there. It bears out what I made of it. I =
was
right.’
The next was written at another time:
‘I have wandered a long distance, and for
many hours, and I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpo=
se
but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am saved from adding that gui=
lt
to the rest. Cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes for my being foun=
d dead,
but I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was right that all
that had sustained me should give way at once and that I should die of terr=
or
and my conscience.’
‘Take courage,’ said Mr Bucket. =
8216;There's
only a few words more.’
Those, too, were written at another time. To a=
ll
appearance, almost in the dark:
‘I have done all I could do to be lost. I
shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing ab=
out
me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place wher=
e I
shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell.
Forgive.’
Mr Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered=
me
gently into my chair. ‘Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dea=
r,
but as soon as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.=
8217;
I did as he required, but I was left there a l=
ong
time, praying for my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor g=
irl,
and I heard Mr Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At lengt=
h he
came in with Mr Bucket and said that as it was important to address her gen=
tly,
he thought it best that I should ask her for whatever information we desire=
d to
obtain. There was no doubt that she could now reply to questions if she were
soothed and not alarmed. The questions, Mr Bucket said, were how she came by
the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the letter,=
and
where the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these poin=
ts,
I went into the next room with them. Mr Woodcourt would have remained outsi=
de,
but at my solicitation went in with us.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor where t=
hey
had laid her down. They stood around her, though at a little distance, that=
she
might have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I kneeled on =
the
ground beside her and put her poor head upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew
her arm round my neck and burst into tears.
‘My poor girl,’ said I, laying my =
face
against her forehead, for indeed I was crying too, and trembling, ‘it
seems cruel to trouble you now, but more depends on our knowing something a=
bout
this letter than I could tell you in an hour.’
She began piteously declaring that she didn't =
mean
any harm, she didn't mean any harm, Mrs Snagsby!
‘We are all sure of that,’ said I.=
‘But
pray tell me how you got it.’
‘Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you tr=
ue.
I'll tell true, indeed, Mrs Snagsby.’
‘I am sure of that,’ said I. ̵=
6;And
how was it?’
‘I had been out on an errand, dear
lady--long after it was dark-- quite late; and when I came home, I found a
common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she=
saw
me coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here. And =
I said
yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here, but had lost =
her
way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! They won't
believe me! She didn't say any harm to me, and I didn't say any harm to her,
indeed, Mrs Snagsby!’
It was necessary for her mistress to comfort
her--which she did, I must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she
could be got beyond this.
‘She could not find those places,’
said I.
‘No!’ cried the girl, shaking her
head. ‘No! Couldn't find them. And she was so faint, and lame, and
miserable, Oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, Mr Snagsby, you'd have
given her half a crown, I know!’
‘Well, Guster, my girl,’ said he, =
at
first not knowing what to say. ‘I hope I should.’
‘And yet she was so well spoken,’ =
said
the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes, ‘that it made a person's
heart bleed. And so she said to me, did I know the way to the burying groun=
d?
And I asked her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground.
And so I told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far from he=
re,
where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.’
As I watched her face and soothed her to go on=
, I
saw that Mr Bucket received this with a look which I could not separate from
one of alarm.
‘Oh, dear, dear!’ cried the girl,
pressing her hair back with her hands. ‘What shall I do, what shall I=
do!
She meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the
sleeping-stuff--that you came home and told us of, Mr Snagsby--that frighte=
ned
me so, Mrs Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!’
‘You are so much better now,’ sald=
I. ‘Pray,
pray tell me more.’
‘Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be an=
gry
with me, that's a dear lady, because I have been so ill.’
Angry with her, poor soul!
‘There! Now I will, now I will. So she s=
aid,
could I tell her how to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she lo=
oked
at me with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving bac=
k.
And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put
that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never se=
nt;
and would I take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid =
at
the house. And so I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no--no harm. =
And
so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I said I
was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless =
you,
and went.’
‘And did she go--’
‘Yes,’ cried the girl, anticipating
the inquiry. ‘Yes! She went the way I had shown her. Then I came in, =
and Mrs
Snagsby came behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was
frightened.’
Mr Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr Bucke=
t wrapped
me up, and immediately we were in the street. Mr Woodcourt hesitated, but I
said, ‘Don't leave me now!’ and Mr Bucket added, ‘You'll =
be
better with us, we may want you; don't lose time!’
I have the most confused impressions of that w=
alk.
I recollect that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but=
the
street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling and that
all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled people passing in=
the
streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the clogged and bursting gutters a=
nd
water-spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the
narrowness of the courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that=
the
poor girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my hear=
ing,
that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained house-fronts put =
on
human shapes and looked at me, that great water-gates seemed to be opening =
and
closing in my head or in the air, and that the unreal things were more subs=
tantial
than the real.
At last we stood under a dark and miserable
covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the mor=
ning
faintly struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground --a
dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could
dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses
with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity
broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful =
wet
of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cr=
y of
pity and horror, a woman lying--Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr
Woodcourt entreated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, befo=
re I
went up to the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr Bucket said. I did
so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
‘Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if
you think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage.’
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could
repeat the words in my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I
attached no meaning to them in any other connexion.
‘And one returned,’ said Mr Bucket=
, ‘and
one went on. And the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upo=
n to
deceive and then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!’=
;
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had =
not
the least idea what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mothe=
r of
the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to =
my
mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She w=
ho
had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my
mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sou=
ght
so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my moth=
er
that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at =
that
moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the
solemn and compassionate look in Mr Woodcourt's face. I saw but did not
comprehend his touching the other on the breast to keep him back. I saw him
stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But my
understanding for all this was gone.
I even heard it said between them, ‘Shall
she go?’
‘She had better go. Her hands should be =
the
first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours.’
I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I li=
fted
the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it w=
as
my mother, cold and dead.
I proceed to other passages of my narrative. F=
rom
the goodness of all about me I derived such consolation as I can never thin=
k of
unmoved. I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains, =
that
I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was not a long on=
e;
and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could quite keep down the
recollection of their sympathy.
I proceed to other passages of my narrative.
During the time of my illness, we were still in
London, where Mrs Woodcourt had come, on my guardian's invitation, to stay =
with
us. When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him in
our old way--though I could have done that sooner if he would have believed
me--I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had appointed the time
himself, and we were alone.
‘Dame Trot,’ said he, receiving me
with a kiss, ‘welcome to the growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme=
to
develop, little woman. I propose to remain here, perhaps for six months,
perhaps for a longer time--as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, =
in
short.’
‘And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?=
’
said I.
‘Aye, my dear? Bleak House,’ he
returned, ‘must learn to take care of itself.’
I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but look=
ing
at him, I saw his kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.
‘Bleak House,’ he repeated--and his
tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I found--’must learn to take care of
itself. It is a long way from Ada, my dear, and Ada stands much in need of =
you.’
‘It's like you, guardian,’ said I,=
‘to
have been taking that into consideration for a happy surprise to both of us=
.’
‘Not so disinterested either, my dear, if
you mean to extol me for that virtue, since if you were generally on the ro=
ad,
you could be seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as oft=
en
of Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of her
alone, but of him too, poor fellow.’
‘Have you seen Mr Woodcourt, this mornin=
g,
guardian?’
‘I see Mr Woodcourt every morning, Dame
Durden.’
‘Does he still say the same of Richard?&=
#8217;
‘Just the same. He knows of no direct bo=
dily
illness that he has; on the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he =
is
not easy about him; who CAN be?’
My dear girl had been to see us lately every d=
ay,
some times twice in a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would =
only
last until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart was=
as
full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it had ever been,
and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions upon her to stay away; b=
ut
we knew on the other hand that she felt it a part of her duty to him to be
sparing of her visits at our house. My guardian's delicacy had soon perceiv=
ed
this and had tried to convey to her that he thought she was right.
‘Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard,=
217;
said I. ‘When will he awake from his delusion!’
‘He is not in the way to do so now, my d=
ear,’
replied my guardian. ‘The more he suffers, the more averse he will be=
to
me, having made me the principal representative of the great occasion of his
suffering.’
I could not help adding, ‘So unreasonabl=
y!’
‘Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot,’ return=
ed
my guardian, ‘what shall we find reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
Unreason and injustice at the top, unreason and injustice at the heart and =
at
the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end--if it ever has an
end--how should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it?=
He
no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older men did=
in
old times.’
His gentleness and consideration for Richard
whenever we spoke of him touched me so that I was always silent on this sub=
ject
very soon.
‘I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the =
Vice
Chancellors, and the whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinite=
ly
astonished by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors,’
pursued my guardian. ‘When those learned gentlemen begin to raise
moss-roses from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be
astonished too!’
He checked himself in glancing towards the win=
dow
to look where the wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead.
‘Well, well, little woman! To go on, my
dear. This rock we must leave to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We
must not shipwreck Ada upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the
remotest chance of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have
particularly begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dea=
r,
not to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month, next
year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can wait.’=
But I had already discussed it with him, I
confessed; and so, I thought, had Mr Woodcourt.
‘So he tells me,’ returned my
guardian. ‘Very good. He has made his protest, and Dame Durden has ma=
de
hers, and there is nothing more to be said about it. Now I come to Mrs
Woodcourt. How do you like her, my dear?’
In answer to this question, which was oddly
abrupt, I said I liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable than
she used to be.
‘I think so too,’ said my guardian=
. ‘Less
pedigree? Not so much of Morgan ap--what's his name?’
That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though =
he
was a very harmless person, even when we had had more of him.
‘Still, upon the whole, he is as well in=
his
native mountains,’ said my guardian. ‘I agree with you. Then,
little woman, can I do better for a time than retain Mrs Woodcourt here?=
217;
No. And yet--
My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I h=
ad
to say.
I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing i=
n my
mind that I could say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been
better if we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained w=
hy
even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
‘You see,’ said my guardian, ̵=
6;our
neighbourhood is in Woodcourt's way, and he can come here to see her as oft=
en
as he likes, which is agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and
fond of you.’
Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say
against it. I could not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not
quite easy in my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think!
‘It is a very good plan indeed, dear
guardian, and we could not do better.’
‘Sure, little woman?’
Quite sure. I had had a moment's time to think,
since I had urged that duty on myself, and I was quite sure.
‘Good,’ said my guardian. ‘It
shall be done. Carried unanimously.’
‘Carried unanimously,’ I repeated,
going on with my work.
It was a cover for his book-table that I happe=
ned
to be ornamenting. It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey
and never resumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I
had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were to come
out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme.
‘You said, dear guardian, when we spoke =
of Mr
Woodcourt before Ada left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to
another country. Have you been advising him since?’
‘Yes, little woman, pretty often.’=
‘Has he decided to do so?’
‘I rather think not.’
‘Some other prospect has opened to him,
perhaps?’ said I.
‘Why--yes--perhaps,’ returned my
guardian, beginning his answer in a very deliberate manner. ‘About ha=
lf a
year hence or so, there is a medical attendant for the poor to be appointed=
at
a certain place in Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated--=
streams
and streets, town and country, mill and moor--and seems to present an openi=
ng
for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most
men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the
ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way=
of
usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are
ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a
road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care
for. It is Woodcourt's kind.’
‘And will he get this appointment?’=
; I
asked.
‘Why, little woman,’ returned my
guardian, smiling, ‘not being an oracle, I cannot confidently say, bu=
t I
think so. His reputation stands very high; there were people from that part=
of
the country in the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has
the best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a ve=
ry,
very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great amount of work =
and
a small amount of pay; but better things will gather about it, it may be fa=
irly
hoped.’
‘The poor of that place will have reason=
to
bless the choice if it falls on Mr Woodcourt, guardian.’
‘You are right, little woman; that I am =
sure
they will.’
We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my s= eat at his side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.<= o:p>
I now began to visit my dear girl every day in=
the
dull dark corner where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenev=
er I
found I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to
Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and used to
brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming in (being qui=
te
at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of becoming troublesome just =
yet.
On these occasions I frequently found Richard
absent. At other times he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at
that table of his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Somet=
imes
I would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr Vholes's office. Sometime=
s I
would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and biting his nails. I
often met him wandering in Lincoln's Inn, near the place where I had first =
seen
him, oh how different, how different!
That the money Ada brought him was melting away
with the candles I used to see burning after dark in Mr Vholes's office I k=
new
very well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in de=
bt,
and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was meant by Mr Vhol=
es's
shoulder being at the wheel--as I still heard it was. My dear made the best=
of
housekeepers and tried hard to save, but I knew that they were getting poor=
er
and poorer every day.
She shone in the miserable corner like a beaut=
iful
star. She adorned and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than=
she
had been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when she =
was
yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that I half believed
she was blinded by her love for Richard to his ruinous career.
I went one day to dine with them while I was u=
nder
this impression. As I turned into Symond's Inn, I met little Miss Flite com=
ing
out. She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as she
still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from that
ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday at five o'cl=
ock,
with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which never appeared there at
any other time, and with her largest reticule of documents on her arm.
‘My dear!’ she began. ‘So
delighted! How do you do! So glad to see you. And you are going to visit our
interesting Jarndyce wards? TO be sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and
will be charmed to see you.’
‘Then Richard is not come in yet?’
said I. ‘I am glad of that, for I was afraid of being a little late.&=
#8217;
‘No, he is not come in,’ returned =
Miss
Flite. ‘He has had a long day in court. I left him there with Vholes.=
You
don't like Vholes, I hope? DON'T like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!’
‘I am afraid you see Richard oftener than
ever now,’ said I.
‘My dearest,’ returned Miss Flite,=
‘daily
and hourly. You know what I told you of the attraction on the Chancellor's
table? My dear, next to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He
begins quite to amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we
not?’
It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad
lips, though it was no surprise.
‘In short, my valued friend,’ purs=
ued
Miss Flite, advancing her lips to my ear with an air of equal patronage and
mystery, ‘I must tell you a secret. I have made him my executor.
Nominated, constituted, and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es.’
‘Indeed?’ said I.
‘Ye-es,’ repeated Miss Flite in her
most genteel accents, ‘my executor, administrator, and assign. (Our
Chancery phrases, my love.) I have reflected that if I should wear out, he =
will
be able to watch that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance.=
217;
It made me sigh to think of him.
‘I did at one time mean,’ said Miss
Flite, echoing the sigh, ‘to nominate, constitute, and appoint poor
Gridley. Also very regular, my charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary!=
But
he wore out, poor man, so I have appointed his successor. Don't mention it.
This is in confidence.’
She carefully opened her reticule a little way=
and
showed me a folded piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she sp=
oke.
‘Another secret, my dear. I have added t=
o my
collection of birds.’
‘Really, Miss Flite?’ said I, know=
ing
how it pleased her to have her confidence received with an appearance of
interest.
She nodded several times, and her face became
overcast and gloomy. ‘Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. Th=
ey
are caged up with all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life,
Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Wo=
rds,
Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!R=
17;
The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled
look I had ever seen in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the
names of her birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own
lips, quite chilled me.
This was not a cheering preparation for my vis=
it,
and I could have dispensed with the company of Mr Vholes, when Richard (who
arrived within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.
Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some minutes both
out of the room together helping to get ready what we were to eat and drink=
. Mr
Vholes took that opportunity of holding a little conversation in a low voice
with me. He came to the window where I was sitting and began upon Symond's =
Inn.
‘A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life
that is not an official one,’ said Mr Vholes, smearing the glass with=
his
black glove to make it clearer for me.
‘There is not much to see here,’ s=
aid
I.
‘Nor to hear, miss,’ returned Mr
Vholes. ‘A little music does occasionally stray in, but we are not
musical in the law and soon eject it. I hope Mr Jarndyce is as well as his
friends could wish him?’
I thanked Mr Vholes and said he was quite well=
.
‘I have not the pleasure to be admitted
among the number of his friends myself,’ said Mr Vholes, ‘and I=
am
aware that the gentlemen of our profession are sometimes regarded in such
quarters with an unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good re=
port
and evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of prejudic=
e),
is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find Mr C. looking, Miss
Summerson?’
‘He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious.&=
#8217;
‘Just so,’ said Mr Vholes.
He stood behind me with his long black figure
reaching nearly to the ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on h=
is
face as if they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though t=
here
were not a human passion or emotion in his nature.
‘Mr Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr C=
., I
believe?’ he resumed.
‘Mr Woodcourt is his disinterested frien=
d,’
I answered.
‘But I mean in professional attendance,
medical attendance.’
‘That can do little for an unhappy mind,=
’
said I.
‘Just so,’ said Mr Vholes.
So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I f=
elt
as if Richard were wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there =
were
something of the vampire in him.
‘Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Vholes, =
very
slowly rubbing his gloved hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they we=
re
much the same in black kid or out of it, ‘this was an ill-advised
marriage of Mr C.'s.’
I begged he would excuse me from discussing it.
They had been engaged when they were both very young, I told him (a little
indignantly) and when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter.
When Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now dar=
kened
his life.
‘Just so,’ assented Mr Vholes agai=
n. ‘Still,
with a view to everything being openly carried on, I will, with your
permission, Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very ill-
advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr C.'s connexions,
against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself, but also to my own
reputation--dear to myself as a professional man aiming to keep respectable;
dear to my three girls at home, for whom I am striving to realize some litt=
le
independence; dear, I will even say, to my aged father, whom it is my privi=
lege
to support.’
‘It would become a very different marria=
ge,
a much happier and better marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr Vholes,=
’
said I, ‘if Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal purs=
uit
in which you are engaged with him.’
Mr Vholes, with a noiseless cough--or rather
gasp--into one of his black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not whol=
ly
dispute even that.
‘Miss Summerson,’ he said, ‘=
it
may be so; and I freely admit that the young lady who has taken Mr C.'s name
upon herself in so ill- advised a manner--you will I am sure not quarrel wi=
th
me for throwing out that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr C.'s
connexions--is a highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from
mixing much with general society in any but a professional character; still=
I
trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young lady. A=
s to
beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did give much attentio=
n to
it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady is equally eligible in that po=
int
of view. She is considered so (I have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, a=
nd
it is a point more in their way than in mine. In reference to Mr C.'s pursu=
it
of his interests--’
‘Oh! His interests, Mr Vholes!’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Mr Vholes, g=
oing
on in exactly the same inward and dispassionate manner. ‘Mr C. takes
certain interests under certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we
use. In reference to Mr C,'s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, =
Miss
Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my desire th=
at
everything should be openly carried on--I used those words, for I happened
afterwards to note them in my diary, which is producible at any time--I
mentioned to you that Mr C. had laid down the principle of watching his own
interests, and that when a client of mine laid down a principle which was n=
ot
of an immoral (that is to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to car=
ry
it out. I HAVE carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth thi=
ngs
over to any connexion of Mr C.'s on any account. As open as I was to Mr
Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional duty to be
so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say, unpalatable as it may=
be,
that I consider Mr C.'s affairs in a very bad way, that I consider Mr C.
himself in a very bad way, and that I regard this as an exceedingly ill-
advised marriage. Am I here, sir? Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr C., and
enjoying the pleasure of some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, f=
or
which I have to thank you very much, sir!’
He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who
addressed him as he came into the room. By this time I too well understood =
Mr
Vholes's scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel
that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client's progress.
We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunit=
y of
observing Richard, anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr Vholes (who took off
his gloves to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I
doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's face.=
I
found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his
manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing =
into
a dull thoughtfulness. About his large bright eyes that used to be so merry
there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. I cann=
ot
use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not
like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all
fallen away.
He ate little and seemed indifferent what it w=
as,
showed himself to be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick =
even
with Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all gone,
but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known little moment=
ary
glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from the glass. His laugh h=
ad
not quite left him either, but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and =
that
is always sorrowful.
Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me there, and we talked of the old times pleasant= ly. These did not appear to be interesting to Mr Vholes, though he occasionally made a gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his office.<= o:p>
‘Always devoted to business, Vholes!R=
17;
cried Richard.
‘Yes, Mr C.,’ he returned, ‘=
the
interests of clients are never to be neglected, sir. They are paramount in =
the
thoughts of a professional man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good n=
ame
among his fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the
pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly irrespecti=
ve
of your own interests, Mr C.’
Richard expressed himself quite sure of that a=
nd
lighted Mr Vholes out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes
was a good fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a =
very
good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he had beg=
un
to doubt Mr Vholes.
Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; =
and
Ada and I put things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman
who attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and
quietly sat down to sing some of Richard's favourites, the lamp being first
removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his eyes.
I sat between them, at my dear girl's side, and
felt very melancholy listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too;=
I
think he darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,
rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr Woodcourt =
came
in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully, half earnestly, quite
naturally and easily, found out how he felt and where he had been all day.
Presently he proposed to accompany him in a short walk on one of the bridge=
s,
as it was a moonlight airy night; and Richard readily consenting, they went=
out
together.
They left my dear girl still sitting at the pi=
ano
and me still sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm rou=
nd
her waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side), but =
kept
her right upon the keys, going over and over them without striking any note=
.
‘Esther, my dearest,’ she said,
breaking silence, ‘Richard is never so well and I am never so easy ab=
out
him as when he is with Allan Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that.̵=
7;
I pointed out to my darling how this could
scarcely be, because Mr Woodcourt had come to her cousin John's house and h=
ad
known us all there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had
always liked him, and--and so forth.
‘All true,’ said Ada, ‘but t=
hat
he is such a devoted friend to us we owe to you.’
I thought it best to let my dear girl have her=
way
and to say no more about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I
felt her trembling.
‘Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good
wife, a very, very good wife indeed. You shall teach me.’
I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand
that was fluttering over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to
speak, that it was she who had something to say to me.
‘When I married Richard I was not insens=
ible
to what was before him. I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you,
and I had never known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I
understood the danger he was in, dear Esther.’
‘I know, I know, my darling.’
‘When we were married I had some little =
hope
that I might be able to convince him of his mistake, that he might come to
regard it in a new way as my husband and not pursue it all the more despera=
tely
for my sake--as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have marri=
ed
him just the same, Esther. Just the same!’
In the momentary firmness of the hand that was
never still--a firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and
dying away with them--I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.
‘You are not to think, my dearest Esther,
that I fail to see what you see and fear what you fear. No one can understa=
nd
him better than I do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could
scarcely know Richard better than my love does.’
She spoke so modestly and softly and her tremb=
ling
hand expressed such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes!=
My
dear, dear girl!
‘I see him at his worst every day. I wat=
ch
him in his sleep. I know every change of his face. But when I married Richa=
rd I
was quite determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him th=
at I
grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him, when he
comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when he looks at me,=
to
see what he loved in me. I married him to do this, and this supports me.=
217;
I felt her trembling more. I waited for what w=
as
yet to come, and I now thought I began to know what it was.
‘And something else supports me, Esther.=
’
She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; h=
er
hand was still in motion.
‘I look forward a little while, and I do=
n't
know what great aid may come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me the=
n,
there may be something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, w=
ith
greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him back.’=
;
Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her ar=
ms,
and I clasped her in mine.
‘If that little creature should fail too,
Esther, I still look forward. I look forward a long while, through years and
years, and think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhap=
s, a
beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him and a
blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as he used to be=
, as
hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the sunshine with him, honouring h=
is
grey head and saying to himself, 'I thank God this is my father! Ruined by a
fatal inheritance, and restored through me!'‘
Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which
beat so fast against me!
‘These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, =
and
I know they will. Though sometimes even they depart from me before a dread =
that
arises when I look at Richard.’
I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her wha=
t it
was. Sobbing and weeping, she replied, ‘That he may not live to see h=
is
child.’
The days when I frequented that miserable corn=
er
which my dear girl brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see=
it,
and I never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in my
memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will shine for
ever.
Not a day passed without my going there, of
course. At first I found Mr Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly
playing the piano and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides m=
y very
much mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard
poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too
inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada's life. I clearly percei=
ved,
too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved, after much thinking=
of
it, to make a private visit to Mr Skimpole and try delicately to explain
myself. My dear girl was the great consideration that made me bold.
I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley,=
for
Somers Town. As I approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn bac=
k,
for I felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr Skim=
pole
and how extremely likely it was that he would signally defeat me. However, I
thought that being there, I would go through with it. I knocked with a
trembling hand at Mr Skimpole's door-- literally with a hand, for the knock=
er
was gone--and after a long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who =
was
in the area when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poke=
r to
light the fire with.
Mr Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room,
playing the flute a little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive
me, he asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I ha=
ve
his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment daughter? Or wou=
ld I
have all the daughters at once in a perfect nosegay?
I replied, half defeated already, that I wishe=
d to
speak to himself only if he would give me leave.
‘My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! =
Of
course,’ he said, bringing his chair nearer mine and breaking into his
fascinating smile, ‘of course it's not business. Then it's pleasure!&=
#8217;
I said it certainly was not business that I ca=
me
upon, but it was not quite a pleasant matter.
‘Then, my dear Miss Summerson,’ sa=
id
he with the frankest gaiety, ‘don't allude to it. Why should you allu=
de
to anything that is NOT a pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much
pleasanter creature, in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly
pleasant; I am imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasa=
nt
matter, how much less should you! So that's disposed of, and we will talk of
something else.’
Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to
intimate that I still wished to pursue the subject.
‘I should think it a mistake,’ sai=
d Mr
Skimpole with his airy laugh, ‘if I thought Miss Summerson capable of
making one. But I don't!’
‘Mr Skimpole,’ said I, raising my =
eyes
to his, ‘I have so often heard you say that you are unacquainted with=
the
common affairs of life--’
‘Meaning our three banking-house friends=
, L,
S, and who's the junior partner? D?’ said Mr Skimpole, brightly. R=
16;Not
an idea of them!’
‘--That perhaps,’ I went on, ̵=
6;you
will excuse my boldness on that account. I think you ought most seriously t=
o know
that Richard is poorer than he was.’
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Skimpole. ̵=
6;So
am I, they tell me.’
‘And in very embarrassed circumstances.&=
#8217;
‘Parallel case, exactly!’ said Mr
Skimpole with a delighted countenance.
‘This at present naturally causes Ada mu=
ch
secret anxiety, and as I think she is less anxious when no claims are made =
upon
her by visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind=
, it
has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that--if you would--not--&=
#8217;
I was coming to the point with great difficulty
when he took me by both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest =
way
anticipated it.
‘Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Mi=
ss
Summerson, most assuredly not. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I=
go
for pleasure. I don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure.
Pain comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at =
our
dear Richard's lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why. Our yo=
ung
friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them,
begin to think, 'This is a man who wants pounds.' So I am; I always want
pounds; not for myself, but because tradespeople always want them of me. Ne=
xt,
our young friends begin to think, becoming mercenary, 'This is the man who =
HAD
pounds, who borrowed them,' which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our you=
ng
friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate in th=
eir
power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see them, therefore?
Absurd!’
Through the beaming smile with which he regard=
ed
me as he reasoned thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested
benevolence quite astonishing.
‘Besides,’ he said, pursuing his
argument in his tone of light- hearted conviction, ‘if I don't go any=
where
for pain--which would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a
monstrous thing to do--why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If=
I
went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of mind,=
I
should give them pain. The associations with me would be disagreeable. They
might say, 'This is the man who had pounds and who can't pay pounds,' which=
I
can't, of course; nothing could be more out of the question! Then kindness
requires that I shouldn't go near them--and I won't.’
He finished by genially kissing my hand and
thanking me. Nothing but Miss Summerson's fine tact, he said, would have fo=
und
this out for him.
I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that =
if
the main point were gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted
everything leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, howev=
er,
and I thought I was not to be put off in that.
‘Mr Skimpole,’ said I, ‘I mu=
st
take the liberty of saying before I conclude my visit that I was much surpr=
ised
to learn, on the best authority, some little time ago, that you knew with w=
hom
that poor boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that
occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would hurt =
him
unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much surprised.’
‘No? Really surprised, my dear Miss
Summerson?’ he returned inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows.
‘Greatly surprised.’
He thought about it for a little while with a
highly agreeable and whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and
said in his most engaging manner, ‘You know what a child I am. Why
surprised?’
I was reluctant to enter minutely into that
question, but as he begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I ga=
ve
him to understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed=
to
involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much amused and
interested when he heard this and said, ‘No, really?’ with
ingenuous simplicity.
‘You know I don't intend to be responsib=
le.
I never could do it. Responsibility is a thing that has always been above
me--or below me,’ said Mr Skimpole. ‘I don't even know which; b=
ut
as I understand the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable =
for
her practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine it=
was
chiefly a question of money, do you know?’
I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this=
.
‘Ah! Then you see,’ said Mr Skimpo=
le,
shaking his head, ‘I am hopeless of understanding it.’
I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not
right to betray my guardian's confidence for a bribe.
‘My dear Miss Summerson,’ he retur=
ned
with a candid hilarity that was all his own, ‘I can't be bribed.̵=
7;
‘Not by Mr Bucket?’ said I.
‘No,’ said he. ‘Not by anybo=
dy.
I don't attach any value to money. I don't care about it, I don't know about
it, I don't want it, I don't keep it--it goes away from me directly. How ca=
n I
be bribed?’
I showed that I was of a different opinion, th=
ough
I had not the capacity for arguing the question.
‘On the contrary,’ said Mr Skimpol=
e, ‘I
am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as th=
at.
I am above the rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with
philosophy in such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Ita=
lian
baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far above
suspicion as Caesar's wife.’
Anything to equal the lightness of his manner =
and
the playful impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he to=
ssed
the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in anybody
else!
‘Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerso=
n.
Here is a boy received into the house and put to bed in a state that I stro=
ngly
object to. The boy being in bed, a man arrives--like the house that Jack bu=
ilt.
Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put =
to
bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a bank-note produced by t=
he
man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a
state that I strongly object to. Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-=
note
produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and =
put
to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well.
Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY should the Skimpole have ref=
used
the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, 'What's this for? I don't understand=
it,
it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket still entreats Skimpole to acc=
ept
it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being warped by prejudices, should
accept it? Yes. Skimpole perceives them. What are they? Skimpole reasons wi=
th
himself, this is a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man=
, a
person of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception
and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they run a=
way,
recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us comfortably whe=
n we
are murdered. This active police-officer and intelligent man has acquired, =
in
the exercise of his art, a strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to
him, and he makes it very useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bu=
cket
because I want it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket's weapon=
s;
shall I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And aga=
in.
If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is blameable in Bucket =
to
offer the note--much more blameable in Bucket, because he is the knowing ma=
n.
Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, =
in
its little place, to the general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think w=
ell
of Bucket. The state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And
that's all he does!’
I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposi=
tion
and therefore took my leave. Mr Skimpole, however, who was in excellent
spirits, would not hear of my returning home attended only by ‘Little
Coavinses,’ and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way =
with
a variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that he sh=
ould
never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out for him about our
young friends.
As it so happened that I never saw Mr Skimpole
again, I may at once finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose
between him and my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and=
on
his having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we afterwar=
ds
learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being heavily in my guardian=
's
debt had nothing to do with their separation. He died some five years
afterwards and left a diary behind him, with letters and other materials
towards his life, which was published and which showed him to have been the
victim of a combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It=
was
considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself than t=
he
sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It was this: R=
16;Jarndyce,
in common with most other men I have known, is the incarnation of selfishne=
ss.’
And now I come to a part of my story touching
myself very nearly indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the
circumstance occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then rev=
ived
in my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as belonging t=
o a part
of my life that was gone--gone like my infancy or my childhood. I have
suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that subject, but have written the=
m as
faithfully as my memory has recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do,
the same down to the last words of these pages, which I see now not so very=
far
before me.
The months were gliding away, and my dear girl,
sustained by the hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star =
in
the miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court day
after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew there was no
remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became one of the stock sigh=
ts
of the place. I wonder whether any of the gentlemen remembered him as he was
when he first went there.
So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea
that he used to avow in his cheerful moments that he should never have brea=
thed
the fresh air now ‘but for Woodcourt.’ It was only Mr Woodcourt=
who
could occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse
him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed us
greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the months went o=
n.
My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued his errors the more d=
esperately
for her sake. I have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost =
was
rendered the more intense by his grief for his young wife, and became like =
the
madness of a gamester.
I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours.
When I was there at night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach;
sometimes my guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk
home together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. I c=
ould
not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for I was working
for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to finish what I was abo=
ut;
but it was within a few minutes of the hour when I bundled up my little
work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss for the night, and hurried downst=
airs.
Mr Woodcourt went with me, as it was dusk.
When we came to the usual place of meeting--it=
was
close by, and Mr Woodcourt had often accompanied me before--my guardian was=
not
there. We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs=
of
him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he had come=
and
gone away, and Mr Woodcourt proposed to walk home with me.
It was the first walk we had ever taken togeth=
er,
except that very short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richa=
rd
and Ada the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done--my
appreciation of it had risen above all words then--but I hoped he might not=
be
without some understanding of what I felt so strongly.
Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found =
that
my guardian was out and that Mrs Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very
same room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful lover,
now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart, the very sam=
e room
from which my guardian and I had watched them going away through the sunlig=
ht
in the fresh bloom of their hope and promise.
We were standing by the opened window looking =
down
into the street when Mr Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he
loved me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to h=
im.
I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and compassion was
devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know it now, too late, too
late. That was the first ungrateful thought I had. Too late.
‘When I returned,’ he told me, =
216;when
I came back, no richer than when I went away, and found you newly risen fro=
m a
sick bed, yet so inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free fro=
m a
selfish thought--’
‘Oh, Mr Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!R=
17;
I entreated him. ‘I do not deserve your high praise. I had many selfi=
sh
thoughts at that time, many!’
‘Heaven knows, beloved of my life,’ said he, ‘that my praise is not a lover's praise, but the truth. You = do not know what all around you see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins.’<= o:p>
‘Oh, Mr Woodcourt,’ cried I, ̵=
6;it
is a great thing to win love, it is a great thing to win love! I am proud of
it, and honoured by it; and the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears=
of
mingled joy and sorrow--joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not dese=
rved
it better; but I am not free to think of yours.’
I said it with a stronger heart, for when he
praised me thus and when I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what=
he
said was true, I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for t=
hat.
Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could be wort=
hier
of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me, and an impulse to me,
and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was derived from him when I tho=
ught
so.
He broke the silence.
‘I should poorly show the trust that I h=
ave
in the dear one who will evermore be as dear to me as now’--and the d=
eep
earnestness with which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep-=
- ‘if,
after her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it. D=
ear
Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I took abroad =
was
exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have always hoped, in the first =
hour
when I seemed to stand in any ray of good fortune, to tell you this. I have
always feared that I should tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both
fulfilled to-night. I distress you. I have said enough.’
Something seemed to pass into my place that was
like the angel he thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had
sustained! I wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when =
he
showed that first commiseration for me.
‘Dear Mr Woodcourt,’ said I, ̵=
6;before
we part to-night, something is left for me to say. I never could say it as I
wish--I never shall--but--’
I had to think again of being more deserving of
his love and his affliction before I could go on.
‘--I am deeply sensible of your generosi=
ty,
and I shall treasure its remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how
changed I am, I know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know w=
hat
a noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me could h=
ave
affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none that could give =
it
such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall make me better.’
He covered his eyes with his hand and turned a=
way
his head. How could I ever be worthy of those tears?
‘If, in the unchanged intercourse we sha=
ll
have together--in tending Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scene=
s of
life --you ever find anything in me which you can honestly think is better =
than
it used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and that I
shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr Woodcourt, never belie=
ve
that I forget this night or that while my heart beats it can be insensible =
to
the pride and joy of having been beloved by you.’
He took my hand and kissed it. He was like him=
self
again, and I felt still more encouraged.
‘I am induced by what you said just now,=
’
said I, ‘to hope that you have succeeded in your endeavour.’
‘I have,’ he answered. ‘With
such help from Mr Jarndyce as you who know him so well can imagine him to h=
ave
rendered me, I have succeeded.’
‘Heaven bless him for it,’ said I,
giving him my hand; ‘and heaven bless you in all you do!’
‘I shall do it better for the wish,̵=
7;
he answered; ‘it will make me enter on these new duties as on another
sacred trust from you.’
‘Ah! Richard!’ I exclaimed
involuntarily, ‘What will he do when you are gone!’
‘I am not required to go yet; I would not
desert him, dear Miss Summerson, even if I were.’
One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon
before he left me. I knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could=
not
take if I reserved it.
‘Mr Woodcourt,’ said I, ‘you
will be glad to know from my lips before I say good night that in the futur=
e,
which is clear and bright before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have
nothing to regret or desire.’
It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replie=
d.
‘From my childhood I have been,’ s=
aid
I, ‘the object of the untiring goodness of the best of human beings, =
to
whom I am so bound by every tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that
nothing I could do in the compass of a life could express the feelings of a
single day.’
‘I share those feelings,’ he retur=
ned.
‘You speak of Mr Jarndyce.’
‘You know his virtues well,’ said =
I, ‘but
few can know the greatness of his character as I know it. All its highest a=
nd
best qualities have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the
shaping out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homa=
ge
and respect had not been his already--which I know they are--they would have
been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it would have awake=
ned
in you towards him for my sake.’
He fervently replied that indeed indeed they w=
ould
have been. I gave him my hand again.
‘Good night,’ I said, ‘Good-=
bye.’
‘The first until we meet to-morrow, the
second as a farewell to this theme between us for ever.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good night; good-bye.’
He left me, and I stood at the dark window
watching the street. His love, in all its constancy and generosity, had com=
e so
suddenly upon me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way
again and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. =
No.
He had called me the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as
dear to him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the tri=
umph
of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died away. It was not
too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be
good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy my path, how much easier than
his!
I had not the courage to see any one that nigh=
t. I
had not even the courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears migh=
t a
little reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the dar=
k,
and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light to read my
guardian's letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it from the place wher=
e I
kept it, and repeated its contents by its own clear light of integrity and
love, and went to sleep with it on my pillow.
I was up very early in the morning and called
Charley to come for a walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and =
came
back and arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that=
I
had a good time still for Charley's lesson before breakfast; Charley (who w=
as
not in the least improved in the old defective article of grammar) came thr=
ough
it with great applause; and we were altogether very notable. When my guardi=
an
appeared he said, ‘Why, little woman, you look fresher than your flow=
ers!’
And Mrs Woodcourt repeated and translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinw=
odd
expressive of my being like a mountain with the sun upon it.
This was all so pleasant that I hope it made m=
e still
more like the mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my
opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his own
room--the room of last night--by himself. Then I made an excuse to go in wi=
th
my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
‘Well, Dame Durden?’ said my guard=
ian;
the post had brought him several letters, and he was writing. ‘You wa=
nt
money?’
‘No, indeed, I have plenty in hand.̵=
7; ‘There
never was such a Dame Durden,’ said my guardian, ‘for making mo=
ney
last.’
He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his
chair looking at me. I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I
had never seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon =
it
which made me think, ‘He has been doing some great kindness this morn=
ing.’
‘There never was,’ said my guardia=
n,
musing as he smiled upon me, ‘such a Dame Durden for making money las=
t.’
He had never yet altered his old manner. I lov=
ed
it and him so much that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair,
which was always put at his side--for sometimes I read to him, and sometime=
s I
talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him-- I hardly liked to
disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not disturb i=
t at
all.
‘Dear guardian,’ said I, ‘I =
want
to speak to you. Have I been remiss in anything?’
‘Remiss in anything, my dear!’
‘Have I not been what I have meant to be
since--I brought the answer to your letter, guardian?’
‘You have been everything I could desire=
, my
love.’
‘I am very glad indeed to hear that,R=
17;
I returned. ‘You know, you said to me, was this the mistress of Bleak
House. And I said, yes.’
‘Yes,’ said my guardian, nodding h=
is
head. He had put his arm about me as if there were something to protect me =
from
and looked in my face, smiling.
‘Since then,’ said I, ‘we ha=
ve
never spoken on the subject except once.’
‘And then I said Bleak House was thinning
fast; and so it was, my dear.’
‘And I said,’ I timidly reminded h=
im, ‘but
its mistress remained.’
He still held me in the same protecting manner=
and
with the same bright goodness in his face.
‘Dear guardian,’ said I, ‘I =
know
how you have felt all that has happened, and how considerate you have been.=
As
so much time has passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so =
well
again, perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so=
. I
will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please.’
‘See,’ he returned gaily, ‘w=
hat
a sympathy there must be between us! I have had nothing else, poor Rick
excepted--it's a large exception--in my mind. When you came in, I was full =
of
it. When shall we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?’
‘When you please.’
‘Next month?’
‘Next month, dear guardian.’
‘The day on which I take the happiest and
best step of my life--the day on which I shall be a man more exulting and m=
ore
enviable than any other man in the world--the day on which I give Bleak Hou=
se
its little mistress--shall be next month then,’ said my guardian.
I put my arms round his neck and kissed him ju=
st
as I had done on the day when I brought my answer.
A servant came to the door to announce Mr Buck=
et,
which was quite unnecessary, for Mr Bucket was already looking in over the
servant's shoulder. ‘Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,’ said he,
rather out of breath, ‘with all apologies for intruding, WILL you all=
ow
me to order up a person that's on the stairs and that objects to being left
there in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank
you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will you?R=
17;
said Mr Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.
This singular request produced an old man in a
black skull-cap, unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers =
and
deposited in the room near the door. Mr Bucket immediately got rid of the
bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
‘Now you see, Mr Jarndyce,’ he then
began, putting down his hat and opening his subject with a flourish of his
well-remembered finger, ‘you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. Th=
is
gentleman likewise knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting lin=
e is
his line principally, and he's what you may call a dealer in bills. That's
about what YOU are, you know, ain't you?’ said Mr Bucket, stopping a
little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly suspicious=
of
him.
He seemed about to dispute this designation of
himself when he was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
‘Now, moral, you know!’ said Mr
Bucket, improving the accident. ‘Don't you contradict when there ain'=
t no
occasion, and you won't be took in that way. Now, Mr Jarndyce, I address my=
self
to you. I've been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I've been in and out and about his
premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly occupied by Krook,
marine store dealer--a relation of this gentleman's that you saw in his
lifetime if I don't mistake?’
My guardian replied, ‘Yes.’
‘Well! You are to understand,’ sai=
d Mr
Bucket, ‘that this gentleman he come into Krook's property, and a good
deal of magpie property there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest.
Lord bless you, of no use to nobody!’
The cunning of Mr Bucket's eye and the masterly
manner in which he contrived, without a look or a word against which his
watchful auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr Smallweed if =
he
thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in quite understanding him. =
His
difficulty was increased by Mr Smallweed's being deaf as well as suspicious=
and
watching his face with the closest attention.
‘Among them odd heaps of old papers, this
gentleman, when he comes into the property, naturally begins to rummage, do=
n't
you see?’ said Mr Bucket.
‘To which? Say that again,’ cried =
Mr
Smallweed in a shrill, sharp voice.
‘To rummage,’ repeated Mr Bucket. =
‘Being
a prudent man and accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to
rummage among the papers as you have come into; don't you?’
‘Of course I do,’ cried Mr Smallwe=
ed.
‘Of course you do,’ said Mr Bucket
conversationally, ‘and much to blame you would be if you didn't. And =
so
you chance to find, you know,’ Mr Bucket went on, stooping over him w=
ith
an air of cheerful raillery which Mr Smallweed by no means reciprocated, =
8216;and
so you chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to =
it.
Don't you?’
Mr Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us=
and
grudgingly nodded assent. ‘And coming to look at that paper at your f=
ull
leisure and convenience--all in good time, for you're not curious to read i=
t,
and why should you be?--what do you find it to be but a will, you see. That=
's
the drollery of it,’ said Mr Bucket with the same lively air of recal=
ling
a joke for the enjoyment of Mr Smallweed, who still had the same crest-fall=
en
appearance of not enjoying it at all; ‘what do you find it to be but a
will?’
‘I don't know that it's good as a will o=
r as
anything else,’ snarled Mr Smallweed.
Mr Bucket eyed the old man for a moment--he had
slipped and shrunk down in his chair into a mere bundle--as if he were much
disposed to pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him wi=
th
the same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.
‘Notwithstanding which,’ said Mr B=
ucket,
‘you get a little doubtful and uncomfortable in your mind about it,
having a very tender mind of your own.’
‘Eh? What do you say I have got of my ow=
n?’
asked Mr Smallweed with his hand to his ear.
‘A very tender mind.’
‘Ho! Well, go on,’ said Mr Smallwe=
ed.
‘And as you've heard a good deal mention=
ed
regarding a celebrated Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know
what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and
books, and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and alw=
ays
a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think-- and you never was mo=
re
correct in your born days--'Ecod, if I don't look about me, I may get into
trouble regarding this will.'‘
‘Now, mind how you put it, Bucket,’
cried the old man anxiously with his hand at his ear. ‘Speak up; none=
of
your brimstone tricks. Pick me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am sh=
aken
to bits!’
Mr Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dar=
t.
However, as soon as he could be heard through Mr Smallweed's coughing and h=
is
vicious ejaculations of ‘Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I've no breath in my
body! I'm worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!R=
17; Mr
Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before.
‘So, as I happen to be in the habit of
coming about your premises, you take me into your confidence, don't you?=
217;
I think it would be impossible to make an
admission with more ill will and a worse grace than Mr Smallweed displayed =
when
he admitted this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr Bucket was the very
last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he could=
by
any possibility have kept him out of it.
‘And I go into the business with you--ve=
ry
pleasant we are over it; and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that =
you
will get yourself into a most precious line if you don't come out with that
there will,’ said Mr Bucket emphatically; ‘and accordingly you
arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr Jarndyce, =
on
no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you trusting yourself to =
him
for your reward; that's about where it is, ain't it?’
‘That's what was agreed,’ Mr Small=
weed
assented with the same bad grace.
‘In consequence of which,’ said Mr
Bucket, dismissing his agreeable manner all at once and becoming strictly
business-like, ‘you've got that will upon your person at the present
time, and the only thing that remains for you to do is just to out with it!=
’
Having given us one glance out of the watching
corner of his eye, and having given his nose one triumphant rub with his
forefinger, Mr Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential frie=
nd
and his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my
guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many declarations=
on
the part of Mr Smallweed that he was a poor industrious man and that he lef=
t it
to Mr Jarndyce's honour not to let him lose by his honesty. Little by littl=
e he
very slowly took from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which wa=
s much
singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had long =
ago
been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr Bucket lost no t=
ime
in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of a conjuror, from Mr Small=
weed
to Mr Jarndyce. As he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his finge=
rs, ‘Hadn't
settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I l=
aid
out twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon him=
on
account of their objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then th=
ey
split on one another. Lord! There ain't one of the family that wouldn't sell
the other for a pound or two, except the old lady--and she's only out of it
because she's too weak in her mind to drive a bargain.’
‘Mr Bucket,’ said my guardian alou=
d, ‘whatever
the worth of this paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you;=
and
if it be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr Smallweed remunerated
accordingly.’
‘Not according to your merits, you know,=
’
said Mr Bucket in friendly explanation to Mr Smallweed. ‘Don't you be
afraid of that. According to its value.’
‘That is what I mean,’ said my
guardian. ‘You may observe, Mr Bucket, that I abstain from examining =
this
paper myself. The plain truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole
business these many years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson an=
d I
will immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the cause,=
and
its existence shall be made known without delay to all other parties
interested.’
‘Mr Jarndyce can't say fairer than that,=
you
understand,’ observed Mr Bucket to his fellow-visitor. ‘And it
being now made clear to you that nobody's a-going to be wronged--which must=
be
a great relief to YOUR mind--we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing y=
ou
home again.’
He unbolted the door, called in the bearers,
wished us good morning, and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his
finger at parting went his way.
We went our way too, which was to Lincoln's In=
n,
as quickly as possible. Mr Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his ta=
ble
in his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of pape=
rs.
Chairs having been placed for us by Mr Guppy, Mr Kenge expressed the surpri=
se
and gratification he felt at the unusual sight of Mr Jarndyce in his office=
. He
turned over his double eye-glass as he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge
than ever.
‘I hope,’ said Mr Kenge, ‘th=
at
the genial influence of Miss Summerson,’ he bowed to me, ‘may h=
ave
induced Mr Jarndyce,’ he bowed to him, ‘to forego some little of
his animosity towards a cause and towards a court which are--shall I say, w=
hich
take their place in the stately vista of the pillars of our profession?R=
17;
‘I am inclined to think,’ returned=
my
guardian, ‘that Miss Summerson has seen too much of the effects of the
court and the cause to exert any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, t=
hey
are a part of the occasion of my being here. Mr Kenge, before I lay this pa=
per
on your desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my
hands.’
He did so shortly and distinctly.
‘It could not, sir,’ said Mr Kenge=
, ‘have
been stated more plainly and to the purpose if it had been a case at law.=
8217;
‘Did you ever know English law, or equity
either, plain and to the purpose?’ said my guardian.
‘Oh, fie!’ said Mr Kenge.
At first he had not seemed to attach much
importance to the paper, but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and
when he had opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became
amazed. ‘Mr Jarndyce,’ he said, looking off it, ‘you have
perused this?’
‘Not I!’ returned my guardian.
‘But, my dear sir,’ said Mr Kenge,=
‘it
is a will of later date than any in the suit. It appears to be all in the
testator's handwriting. It is duly executed and attested. And even if inten=
ded
to be cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks=
of
fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!’
‘Well!’ said my guardian. ‘W=
hat
is that to me?’
‘Mr Guppy!’ cried Mr Kenge, raising
his voice. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Jarndyce.’
‘Sir.’
‘Mr Vholes of Symond's Inn. My complimen=
ts.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Glad to speak with him.’
Mr Guppy disappeared.
‘You ask me what is this to you, Mr
Jarndyce. If you had perused this document, you would have seen that it red=
uces
your interest considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, st=
ill
leaving it a very handsome one,’ said Mr Kenge, waving his hand
persuasively and blandly. ‘You would further have seen that the inter=
ests
of Mr Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs Richard Carstone, are
very materially advanced by it.’
‘Kenge,’ said my guardian, ‘=
if
all the flourishing wealth that the suit brought into this vile court of
Chancery could fall to my two young cousins, I should be well contented. Bu=
t do
you ask ME to believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?=
217;
‘Oh, really, Mr Jarndyce! Prejudice,
prejudice. My dear sir, this is a very great country, a very great country.=
Its
system of equity is a very great system, a very great system. Really, reall=
y!’
My guardian said no more, and Mr Vholes arrive=
d.
He was modestly impressed by Mr Kenge's professional eminence.
‘How do you do, Mr Vholes? Willl you be =
so
good as to take a chair here by me and look over this paper?’
Mr Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to re=
ad
it every word. He was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything.
When he had well examined it, he retired with Mr Kenge into a window, and
shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length. I was =
not
surprised to observe Mr Kenge inclined to dispute what he said before he had
said much, for I knew that no two people ever did agree about anything in
Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed to get the better of Mr Kenge too in a
conversation that sounded as if it were almost composed of the words ‘=
;Receiver-
General,’ ‘Accountant-General,’ ‘report,’ =
216;estate,’
and ‘costs.’ When they had finished, they came back to Mr Kenge=
's
table and spoke aloud.
‘Well! But this is a very remarkable doc=
ument,
Mr Vholes,’ said Mr Kenge.
Mr Vholes said, ‘Very much so.’
‘And a very important document, Mr Vhole=
s,’
said Mr Kenge.
Again Mr Vholes said, ‘Very much so.R=
17;
‘And as you say, Mr Vholes, when the cau=
se
is in the paper next term, this document will be an unexpected and interest=
ing
feature in it,’ said Mr Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian.
Mr Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practiti=
oner
striving to keep respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by =
such
an authority.
‘And when,’ asked my guardian, ris=
ing
after a pause, during which Mr Kenge had rattled his money and Mr Vholes had
picked his pimples, ‘when is next term?’
‘Next term, Mr Jarndyce, will be next mo=
nth,’
said Mr Kenge. ‘Of course we shall at once proceed to do what is nece=
ssary
with this document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and=
of
course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in the pa=
per.’
‘To which I shall pay, of course, my usu=
al
attention.’
‘Still bent, my dear sir,’ said Mr
Kenge, showing us through the outer office to the door, ‘still bent, =
even
with your enlarged mind, on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous
community, Mr Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country=
, Mr
Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr Jarndyce,=
and
would you wish a great country to have a little system? Now, really, really=
!’
He said this at the stair-head, gently moving =
his
right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of=
his
words on the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages=
.
George's Shooting Gallery is to let, and the s=
tock
is sold off, and George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicest=
er
in his rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain =
hand
with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so occupied. He is
journeying to-day into the iron country farther north to look about him.
As he comes into the iron country farther nort=
h,
such fresh green woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal p=
its
and ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires,=
and
a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the features of the scenery.
Among such objects rides the trooper, looking about him and always looking =
for
something he has come to find.
At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy t=
own,
with a clang of iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen =
yet,
the trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and as=
ks a
workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts.
‘Why, master,’ quoth the workman, =
‘do
I know my own name?’
‘'Tis so well known here, is it, comrade=
?’
asks the trooper.
‘Rouncewell's? Ah! You're right.’<= o:p>
‘And where might it be now?’ asks =
the
trooper with a glance before him.
‘The bank, the factory, or the house?=
217;
the workman wants to know.
‘Hum! Rouncewell's is so great apparentl=
y,’
mutters the trooper, stroking his chin, ‘that I have as good as half a
mind to go back again. Why, I don't know which I want. Should I find Mr
Rouncewell at the factory, do you think?’
‘Tain't easy to say where you'd find him=
--at
this time of the day you might find either him or his son there, if he's in
town; but his contracts take him away.’
And which is the factory? Why, he sees those
chimneys--the tallest ones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on
those chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll see
'em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall which forms o=
ne
side of the street. That's Rouncewell's.
The trooper thanks his informant and rides slo=
wly
on, looking about him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is
much disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of Rouncewell's
hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of Rouncewell's hands have =
just
knocked off for dinner-time and seem to be invading the whole town. They are
very sinewy and strong, are Rouncewell's hands--a little sooty too.
He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks=
in,
and sees a great perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast
variety of shapes--in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in
axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched into
eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery; mountains of it
broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubblin=
g in
its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about under the blows of the st=
eam-hammer;
red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell,
and a Babel of iron sounds.
‘This is a place to make a man's head ac=
he
too!’ says the trooper, looking about him for a counting-house. ̵=
6;Who
comes here? This is very like me before I was set up. This ought to be my
nephew, if likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir.’
‘Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one=
?’
‘Excuse me. Young Mr Rouncewell, I belie=
ve?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was looking for your father, sir. I w=
ish
to have a word with him.’
The young man, telling him he is fortunate in =
his
choice of a time, for his father is there, leads the way to the office wher=
e he
is to be found. ‘Very like me before I was set up--devilish like me!&=
#8217;
thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard with =
an
office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the office, Mr George
turns very red.
‘What name shall I say to my father?R=
17;
asks the young man.
George, full of the idea of iron, in desperati=
on
answers ‘Steel,’ and is so presented. He is left alone with the
gentleman in the office, who sits at a table with account-books before him =
and
some sheets of paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning
shapes. It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view be=
low.
Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron, purposely broken to =
be
tested at various periods of their service, in various capacities. There is
iron-dust on everything; and the smoke is seen through the windows rolling =
heavily
out of the tall chimneys to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of
other chimneys.
‘I am at your service, Mr Steel,’ =
says
the gentleman when his visitor has taken a rusty chair.
‘Well, Mr Rouncewell,’ George repl=
ies,
leaning forward with his left arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and =
very
chary of meeting his brother's eye, ‘I am not without my expectations
that in the present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have
served as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather
partial to was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you
had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did=
any
good but in keeping away?’
‘Are you quite sure,’ returns the
ironmaster in an altered voice, ‘that your name is Steel?’
The trooper falters and looks at him. His brot=
her
starts up, calls him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
‘You are too quick for me!’ cries =
the
trooper with the tears springing out of his eyes. ‘How do you do, my =
dear
old fellow? I never could have thought you would have been half so glad to =
see
me as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!’
They shake hands and embrace each other over a=
nd
over again, the trooper still coupling his ‘How do you do, my dear old
fellow!’ with his protestation that he never thought his brother would
have been half so glad to see him as all this!
‘So far from it,’ he declares at t=
he
end of a full account of what has preceded his arrival there, ‘I had =
very
little idea of making myself known. I thought if you took by any means
forgivingly to my name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writ=
ing
a letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had conside=
red
it anything but welcome news to hear of me.’
‘We will show you at home what kind of n=
ews
we think it, George,’ returns his brother. ‘This is a great day=
at
home, and you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better.=
I
make an agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he s=
hall
marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. She
goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a little polishing up=
in
her education. We make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero =
of
it.’
Mr George is so entirely overcome at first by =
this
prospect that he resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being
overborne, however, by his brother and his nephew--concerning whom he renews
his protestations that he never could have thought they would have been hal=
f so
glad to see him--he is taken home to an elegant house in all the arrangemen=
ts
of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture of the originally simple
habits of the father and mother with such as are suited to their altered
station and the higher fortunes of their children. Here Mr George is much
dismayed by the graces and accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the
beauty of Rosa, his niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutation=
s of
these young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely taken
aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a woeful
consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there is great rejoi=
cing
and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment, and Mr George comes bluff=
and
martial through it all, and his pledge to be present at the marriage and gi=
ve
away the bride is received with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr Ge=
orge
that night when he lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house to thi=
nk
of all these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the even=
ing
in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner, over his
counterpane.
The brothers are closeted next morning in the
ironmaster's room, where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way=
, to
show how he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when Geor=
ge
squeezes his hand and stops him.
‘Brother, I thank you a million times for
your more than brotherly welcome, and a million times more to that for your
more than brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word =
as
to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How,’ says the
trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at his brot=
her,
‘how is my mother to be got to scratch me?’
‘I am not sure that I understand you,
George,’ replies the ironmaster.
‘I say, brother, how is my mother to be =
got
to scratch me? She must be got to do it somehow.’
‘Scratch you out of her will, I think you
mean?’
‘Of course I do. In short,’ says t=
he
trooper, folding his arms more resolutely yet, ‘I mean--TO--scratch m=
e!’
‘My dear George,’ returns his brot= her, ‘is it so indispensable that you should undergo that process?’<= o:p>
‘Quite! Absolutely! I couldn't be guilty=
of
the meanness of coming back without it. I should never be safe not to be off
again. I have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, broth=
er,
of your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and hold =
up
my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of celebrated penetration=
and
intelligence, and you can tell me how it's to be brought about.’
‘I can tell you, George,’ replies =
the
ironmaster deliberately, ‘how it is not to be brought about, which I =
hope
may answer the purpose as well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her
emotion when she recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in =
the
world that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son? =
Do
you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against the outr=
age
it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it? If you do, you are
wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to remain UNscratched, I thin=
k.’
There is an amused smile on the ironmaster's face as he watches his brother,
who is pondering, deeply disappointed. ‘I think you may manage almost=
as
well as if the thing were done, though.’
‘How, brother?’
‘Being bent upon it, you can dispose by =
will
of anything you have the misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you kno=
w.’
‘That's true!’ says the trooper,
pondering again. Then he wistfully asks, with his hand on his brother's, =
8216;Would
you mind mentioning that, brother, to your wife and family?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Thank you. You wouldn't object to say,
perhaps, that although an undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the
harum-scarum order, and not of the mean sort?’
The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile,
assents.
‘Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off=
my
mind,’ says the trooper with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his a=
rms
and puts a hand on each leg, ‘though I had set my heart on being
scratched, too!’
The brothers are very like each other, sitting
face to face; but a certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the =
ways
of the world is all on the trooper's side.
‘Well,’ he proceeds, throwing off =
his
disappointment, ‘next and last, those plans of mine. You have been so
brotherly as to propose to me to fall in here and take my place among the
products of your perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It's more th=
an
brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,’ shaking
him a long time by the hand. ‘But the truth is, brother, I am a--I am=
a
kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular garden.’
‘My dear George,’ returns the elde=
r,
concentrating his strong steady brow upon him and smiling confidently, R=
16;leave
that to me, and let me try.’
George shakes his head. ‘You could do it=
, I
have not a doubt, if anybody could; but it's not to be done. Not to be done,
sir! Whereas it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of so=
me
trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness-- brought on by fa=
mily
sorrows--and that he would rather have that help from our mother's son than
from anybody else.’
‘Well, my dear George,’ returns th=
e other
with a very slight shade upon his open face, ‘if you prefer to serve =
in
Sir Leicester Dedlock's household brigade--’
‘There it is, brother,’ cries the
trooper, checking him, with his hand upon his knee again; ‘there it i=
s!
You don't take kindly to that idea; I don't mind it. You are not used to be=
ing
officered; I am. Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline;
everything about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry
things with the same hand or to look at 'em from the same point. I don't say
much about my garrison manners because I found myself pretty well at my ease
last night, and they wouldn't be noticed here, I dare say, once and away. B=
ut I
shall get on best at Chesney Wold, where there's more room for a weed than =
there
is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I acce=
pt
of Sir Leicester Dedlock's proposals. When I come over next year to give aw=
ay
the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep the household
brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your ground. I thank you
heartily again and am proud to think of the Rouncewells as they'll be found=
ed
by you.’
‘You know yourself, George,’ says =
the
elder brother, returning the grip of his hand, ‘and perhaps you know =
me
better than I know myself. Take your way. So that we don't quite lose one
another again, take your way.’
‘No fear of that!’ returns the
trooper. ‘Now, before I turn my horse's head homewards, brother, I wi=
ll
ask you--if you'll be so good--to look over a letter for me. I brought it w=
ith
me to send from these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just n=
ow
to the person it's written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence
myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I want i=
t to
be both straightforward and delicate.’
Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in
somewhat pale ink but in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as
follows:
Miss Esther Summerson,
A communication having been made to me by
Inspector Bucket of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a
certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you that it was but a f=
ew
lines of instruction from abroad, when, where, and how to deliver an enclos=
ed
letter to a young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I duly
observed the same.
I further take the liberty to make known to you
that it was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that otherwise I
would not have given it up, as appearing to be the most harmless in my
possession, without being previously shot through the heart.
I further take the liberty to mention that if I
could have supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in existen=
ce,
I never could and never would have rested until I had discovered his retreat
and shared my last farthing with him, as my duty and my inclination would h=
ave
equally been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and assuredly went =
over
the side of a transport- ship at night in an Irish harbour within a few hou=
rs
of her arrival from the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from offic=
ers
and men on board, and know to have been (officially) confirmed.
I further take the liberty to state that in my
humble quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever continue to
be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring servant and that I esteem the
qualities you possess above all others far beyond the limits of the present
dispatch.
I have the honour to be,
GEORGE
‘A little formal,’ observes the el=
der
brother, refolding it with a puzzled face.
‘But nothing that might not be sent to a
pattern young lady?’ asks the younger.
‘Nothing at all.’
Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posti=
ng
among the iron correspondence of the day. This done, Mr George takes a hear=
ty
farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His brother,
however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to ride with him in a
light open carriage to the place where he will bait for the night, and there
remain with him until morning, a servant riding for so much of the journey =
on
the thoroughbred old grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accept=
ed,
is followed by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast,
all in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and hearti=
ly and
part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the troop=
er
to the green country. Early in the afternoon the subdued sound of his heavy
military trot is heard on the turf in the avenue as he rides on with imagin=
ary
clank and jingle of accoutrements under the old elm-trees.
Soon after I had that convertion with my guard=
ian,
he put a sealed paper in my hand one morning and said, ‘This is for n=
ext
month, my dear.’ I found in it two hundred pounds.
I now began very quietly to make such preparat=
ions
as I thought were necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian's taste,
which I knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and
hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because I was =
not
quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be rather sorry and beca=
use
my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no doubt that under all the
circumstances we should be married in the most private and simple manner.
Perhaps I should only have to say to Ada, ‘Would you like to come and=
see
me married to-morrow, my pet?’ Perhaps our wedding might even be as
unpretending as her own, and I might not find it necessary to say anything
about it until it was over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like
this best.
The only exception I made was Mrs Woodcourt. I
told her that I was going to be married to my guardian and that we had been
engaged some time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and
was remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we fi=
rst
knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have been of use=
to
me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to take as little as
gratified her kindness without tasking it.
Of course this was not a time to neglect my
guardian, and of course it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I h=
ad
plenty of occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was
absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with great he=
aps
of it--baskets full and tables full--and do a little, and spend a great dea=
l of
time in staring with her round eyes at what there was to do, and persuade
herself that she was going to do it, were Charley's great dignities and
delights.
Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with =
my
guardian on the subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarnd=
yce
and Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did
encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a burst=
of
business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time, but he had lost
the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to retain only its feverish
anxieties. From something my guardian said one day when we were talking abo=
ut
this, I understood that my marriage would not take place until after the
term-time we had been told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for
that, how rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada w=
ere
a little more prosperous.
The term was very near indeed when my guardian=
was
called out of town and went down into Yorkshire on Mr Woodcourt's business.=
He
had told me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had ju=
st
come in one night from my dear girl's and was sitting in the midst of all my
new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when a letter from=
my
guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him in the country and
mentioned by what stage- coach my place was taken and at what time in the
morning I should have to leave town. It added in a postscript that I would =
not
be many hours from Ada.
I expected few things less than a journey at t=
hat
time, but I was ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early
next morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be wanted=
for
at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this purpose, and now I
thought it might be for that purpose, but I was never, never, never near the
truth.
It was night when I came to my journey's end a=
nd
found my guardian waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards even=
ing
I had begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that he
might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to be; and =
when
I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I said to myself, he=
has
been doing some other great kindness. Not that it required much penetration=
to
say that, because I knew that his being there at all was an act of kindness=
.
Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were
alone at table he said, ‘Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to
know why I have brought you here?’
‘Well, guardian,’ said I, ‘w=
ithout
thinking myself a Fatima or you a Blue Beard, I am a little curious about i=
t.’
‘Then to ensure your night's rest, my lo=
ve,’
he returned gaily, ‘I won't wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have =
very
much wished to express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to p=
oor
unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his value=
to
us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it came into my head
that I might ask his acceptance of some unpretending and suitable little pl=
ace
to lay his own head in. I therefore caused such a place to be looked out fo=
r,
and such a place was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it =
up
for him and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day bef=
ore
yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not housekeeper eno=
ugh
to know whether things were all as they ought to be. So I sent off for the =
best
little housekeeper that could possibly be got to come and give me her advice
and opinion. And here she is,’ said my guardian, ‘laughing and
crying both together!’
Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable.=
I
tried to tell him what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.=
‘Tut, tut!’ said my guardian. R=
16;You
make too much of it, little woman. Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you s=
ob!’
‘It is with exquisite pleasure,
guardian--with a heart full of thanks.’
‘Well, well,’ said he. ‘I am
delighted that you approve. I thought you would. I meant it as a pleasant
surprise for the little mistress of Bleak House.’
I kissed him and dried my eyes. ‘I know =
now!’
said I. ‘I have seen this in your face a long while.’
‘No; have you really, my dear?’ sa=
id
he. ‘What a Dame Durden it is to read a face!’
He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not l=
ong
be otherwise, and was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I
went to bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was
with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I repeated
every word of the letter twice over.
A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and
after breakfast we went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to g=
ive
my mighty housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a s=
ide
wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the beds =
and
flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds and flowers at
home.
‘You see, my dear,’ observed my
guardian, standing still with a delighted face to watch my looks, ‘kn=
owing
there could be no better plan, I borrowed yours.’
We went on by a pretty little orchard, where t=
he
cherries were nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-=
trees
were sporting on the grass, to the house itself--a cottage, quite a rustic
cottage of doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil and so beauti=
ful,
with such a rich and smiling country spread around it; with water sparkling
away into the distance, here all overhung with summer-growth, there turning=
a
humming mill; at its nearest point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful
town, where cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was
flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And still, as=
we
went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic verandah doors, and
underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded with woodbine, jasmine, and
honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on the walls, in the colours of the
furniture, in the arrangement of all the pretty objects, MY little tastes a=
nd
fancies, MY little methods and inventions which they used to laugh at while
they praised them, my odd ways everywhere.
I could not say enough in admiration of what w=
as
all so beautiful, but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I
thought, oh, would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better =
for
his peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because althou=
gh I
was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly, and it might rem=
ind
him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I did not wish him to forget
me--perhaps he might not have done so, without these aids to his memory--bu=
t my
way was easier than his, and I could have reconciled myself even to that so
that he had been the happier for it.
‘And now, little woman,’ said my
guardian, whom I had never seen so proud and joyful as in showing me these
things and watching my appreciation of them, ‘now, last of all, for t=
he
name of this house.’
‘What is it called, dear guardian?’=
;
‘My child,’ said he, ‘come a=
nd
see,’
He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto
avoided, and said, pausing before we went out, ‘My dear child, don't =
you
guess the name?’
‘No!’ said I.
We went out of the porch and he showed me writ=
ten
over it, Bleak House.
He led me to a seat among the leaves close by,=
and
sitting down beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, ‘=
My
darling girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really
solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which you bro=
ught
the answer,’ smiling as he referred to it, ‘I had my own too mu=
ch
in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different circumstances, I mig=
ht
ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes dreamed when you were very youn=
g,
of making you my wife one day, I need not ask myself. I did renew it, and I
wrote my letter, and you brought your answer. You are following what I say,=
my
child?’
I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a
word he uttered was lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun's rays
descended, softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as =
if
the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels.
‘Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It =
is
for me to speak now. When it was that I began to doubt whether what I had d=
one
would really make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon h=
ad
no doubt at all.’
I clasped him round the neck and hung my head =
upon
his breast and wept. ‘Lie lightly, confidently here, my child,’
said he, pressing me gently to him. ‘I am your guardian and your fath=
er
now. Rest confidently here.’
Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the
leaves; and genially, like the ripening weather; and radiantly and benefice=
ntly,
like the sunshine, he went on.
‘Understand me, my dear girl. I had no d=
oubt
of your being contented and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted;=
but
I saw with whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame
Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could never
change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been in Allan
Woodcourt's confidence, although he was not, until yesterday, a few hours
before you came here, in mine. But I would not have my Esther's bright exam=
ple
lost; I would not have a jot of my dear girl's virtues unobserved and
unhonoured; I would not have her admitted on sufferance into the line of Mo=
rgan
ap-Kerrig, no, not for the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!=
217;
He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I
sobbed and wept afresh. For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delig=
ht
of his praise.
‘Hush, little woman! Don't cry; this is =
to
be a day of joy. I have looked forward to it,’ he said exultingly, =
8216;for
months on months! A few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say.
Determined not to throw away one atom of my Esther's worth, I took Mrs
Woodcourt into a separate confidence. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'I clearly
perceive--and indeed I know, to boot--that your son loves my ward. I am fur=
ther
very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to a sen=
se
of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely, so entirely, so
religiously, that you should never suspect it though you watched her night =
and
day.' Then I told her all our story--ours--yours and mine. 'Now, madam,' sa=
id
I, 'come you, knowing this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child fr=
om
hour to hour; set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and
this'--for I scorned to mince it--'and tell me what is the true legitimacy =
when
you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' Why, honour to her=
old
Welsh blood, my dear,’ cried my guardian with enthusiasm, ‘I
believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less admiringly, no =
less
lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!’
He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to =
him,
kissed me in his old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the
protecting manner I had thought about!
‘One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt
spoke to you, my dear, he spoke with my knowledge and consent--but I gave h=
im
no encouragement, not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was
too miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all that
passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood
beside your father when he lay dead --stood beside your mother. This is Ble=
ak
House. This day I give this house its little mistress; and before God, it is
the brightest day in all my life!’
He rose and raised me with him. We were no lon=
ger
alone. My husband--I have called him by that name full seven happy years now
--stood at my side.
‘Allan,’ said my guardian, ‘=
take
from me a willing gift, the best wife that ever man had. What more can I say
for you than that I know you deserve her! Take with her the little home she
brings you. You know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has ma=
de
its namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I sacrifice?
Nothing, nothing.’
He kissed me once again, and now the tears wer=
e in
his eyes as he said more softly, ‘Esther, my dearest, after so many
years, there is a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has
caused you some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his
old place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take my
dear.’
He moved away from under the green roof of lea=
ves,
and stopping in the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, sai=
d, ‘I
shall be found about here somewhere. It's a west wind, little woman, due we=
st!
Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to my bachelor habit=
s,
and if anybody disregards this warning, I'll run away and never come back!&=
#8217;
What happiness was ours that day, what joy, wh=
at
rest, what hope, what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before t=
he
month was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own house
was to depend on Richard and Ada.
We all three went home together next day. As s=
oon
as we arrived in town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our
joyful news to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for=
a
few minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian fi=
rst
to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his side, for I did =
not
like to think of its being empty so soon.
When we came home we found that a young man had
called three times in the course of that one day to see me and that having =
been
told on the occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return be=
fore
ten o'clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then. He had
left his card three times. Mr Guppy.
As I naturally speculated on the object of the=
se
visits, and as I always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it
fell out that in laughing about Mr Guppy I told my guardian of his old prop=
osal
and his subsequent retraction. ‘After that,’ said my guardian, =
‘we
will certainly receive this hero.’ So instructions were given that Mr
Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they were scarcely given w=
hen
he did come again.
He was embarrassed when he found my guardian w=
ith
me, but recovered himself and said, ‘How de do, sir?’
‘How do you do, sir?’ returned my
guardian.
‘Thank you, sir, I am tolerable,’ =
returned
Mr Guppy. ‘Will you allow me to introduce my mother, Mrs Guppy of the=
Old
Street Road, and my particular friend, Mr Weevle. That is to say, my friend=
has
gone by the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling.’=
;
My guardian begged them to be seated, and they=
all
sat down.
‘Tony,’ said Mr Guppy to his friend
after an awkward silence. ‘Will you open the case?’
‘Do it yourself,’ returned the fri=
end
rather tartly.
‘Well, Mr Jarndyce, sir,’ Mr Guppy,
after a moment's consideration, began, to the great diversion of his mother,
which she displayed by nudging Mr Jobling with her elbow and winking at me =
in a
most remarkable manner, ‘I had an idea that I should see Miss Summers=
on
by herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But Miss
Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has passed between =
us
on former occasions?’
‘Miss Summerson,’ returned my
guardian, smiling, ‘has made a communication to that effect to me.=
217;
‘That,’ said Mr Guppy, ‘makes
matters easier. Sir, I have come out of my articles at Kenge and Carboy's, =
and
I believe with satisfaction to all parties. I am now admitted (after underg=
oing
an examination that's enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonse=
nse
that he don't want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my
certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it.’
‘Thank you, Mr Guppy,’ returned my
guardian. ‘I am quite willing --I believe I use a legal phrase--to ad=
mit
the certificate.’
Mr Guppy therefore desisted from taking someth=
ing
out of his pocket and proceeded without it.
‘I have no capital myself, but my mother=
has
a little property which takes the form of an annuity’--here Mr Guppy's
mother rolled her head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observa=
tion,
and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me--’and a=
few
pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never be want=
ing,
free of interest, which is an advantage, you know,’ said Mr Guppy
feelingly.
‘Certainly an advantage,’ returned=
my
guardian.
‘I HAVE some connexion,’ pursued Mr
Guppy, ‘and it lays in the direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have
therefore taken a 'ouse in that locality, which, in the opinion of my frien=
ds,
is a hollow bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the
rent), and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith.R=
17;
Here Mr Guppy's mother fell into an extraordin=
ary
passion of rolling her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look=
at
her.
‘It's a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchen=
s,’
said Mr Guppy, ‘and in the opinion of my friends, a commodious teneme=
nt.
When I mention my friends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I
believe has known me,’ Mr Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air,=
‘from
boyhood's hour.’
Mr Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movem=
ent
of his legs.
‘My friend Jobling will render me his
assistance in the capacity of clerk and will live in the 'ouse,’ said=
Mr
Guppy. ‘My mother will likewise live in the 'ouse when her present qu=
arter
in the Old Street Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there
will be no want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by
taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper circles,
fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing.’
Mr Jobling said ‘Certainly’ and
withdrew a little from the elbow of Mr Guppy's mother.
‘Now, I have no occasion to mention to y=
ou,
sir, you being in the confidence of Miss Summerson,’ said Mr Guppy, &=
#8216;(mother,
I wish you'd be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson's image was
formerly imprinted on my 'eart and that I made her a proposal of marriage.&=
#8217;
‘That I have heard,’ returned my
guardian.
‘Circumstances,’ pursued Mr Guppy,=
‘over
which I had no control, but quite the contrary, weakened the impression of =
that
image for a time. At which time Miss Summerson's conduct was highly genteel=
; I
may even add, magnanimous.’
My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seem=
ed
much amused.
‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Guppy, ‘I
have got into that state of mind myself that I wish for a reciprocity of
magnanimous behaviour. I wish to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to=
a
heighth of which perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the ima=
ge
which I did suppose had been eradicated from my 'eart is NOT eradicated. Its
influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am willing to
overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had any control and to
renew those proposals to Miss Summerson which I had the honour to make at a
former period. I beg to lay the 'ouse in Walcot Square, the business, and
myself before Miss Summerson for her acceptance.’
‘Very magnanimous indeed, sir,’
observed my guardian.
‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr Guppy with
candour, ‘my wish is to BE magnanimous. I do not consider that in mak=
ing
this offer to Miss Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neithe=
r is
that the opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I subm=
it
may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks of mine,
and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at.’
‘I take upon myself, sir,’ said my
guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, ‘to reply to your proposals on
behalf of Miss Summerson. She is very sensible of your handsome intentions,=
and
wishes you good evening, and wishes you well.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Guppy with a blank l=
ook.
‘Is that tantamount, sir, to acceptance, or rejection, or considerati=
on?’
‘To decided rejection, if you please,=
217;
returned my guardian.
Mr Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, a=
nd
at his mother, who suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the
ceiling.
‘Indeed?’ said he. ‘Then,
Jobling, if you was the friend you represent yourself, I should think you m=
ight
hand my mother out of the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where s=
he
ain't wanted.’
But Mrs Guppy positively refused to come out of
the gangway. She wouldn't hear of it. ‘Why, get along with you,’
said she to my guardian, ‘what do you mean? Ain't my son good enough =
for
you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!’
‘My good lady,’ returned my guardi=
an, ‘it
is hardly reasonable to ask me to get out of my own room.’
‘I don't care for that,’ said Mrs
Guppy. ‘Get out with you. If we ain't good enough for you, go and pro=
cure
somebody that is good enough. Go along and find 'em.’
I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in
which Mrs Guppy's power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the
profoundest offence.
‘Go along and find somebody that's good
enough for you,’ repeated Mrs Guppy. ‘Get out!’ Nothing
seemed to astonish Mr Guppy's mother so much and to make her so very indign=
ant
as our not getting out. ‘Why don't you get out?’ said Mrs Guppy=
. ‘What
are you stopping here for?’
‘Mother,’ interposed her son, alwa=
ys
getting before her and pushing her back with one shoulder as she sidled at =
my
guardian, ‘WILL you hold your tongue?’
‘No, William,’ she returned, ̵=
6;I
won't! Not unless he gets out, I won't!’
However, Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling together clos=
ed
on Mr Guppy's mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much
against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every time her
figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should immediately go and f=
ind
somebody who was good enough for us, and above all things that we should get
out.
The term had commenced, and my guardian found =
an
intimation from Mr Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had
sufficient hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agree=
d to
go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and was so
weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl
indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked forward--a very li=
ttle
way now--to the help that was to come to her, and never drooped.
It was at Westminster that the cause was to co=
me
on. It had come on there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could n=
ot
divest myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home
directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and walked =
down
there through the lively streets--so happily and strangely it
seemed!--together.
As we were going along, planning what we shoul=
d do
for Richard and Ada, I heard somebody calling ‘Esther! My dear Esther!
Esther!’ And there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window=
of
a little carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had=
so
many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I had
written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done, but had not
had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back, and the affection=
ate
girl was in that state of rapture, and was so overjoyed to talk about the n=
ight
when she brought me the flowers, and was so determined to squeeze my face
(bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether,
calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't
know what for her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage =
and
calm her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan, stan=
ding
at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased as either of t=
hem;
and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than that I came off laughing=
, and
red, and anything but tidy, and looking after Caddy, who looked after us ou=
t of
the coach-window as long as she could see us.
This made us some quarter of an hour late, and
when we came to Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun.
Worse than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery th=
at
it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what was passing
within. It appeared to be something droll, for occasionally there was a lau=
gh
and a cry of ‘Silence!’ It appeared to be something interesting,
for every one was pushing and striving to get nearer. It appeared to be
something that made the professional gentlemen very merry, for there were
several young counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd,=
and
when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their
pockets, and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping a=
bout
the pavement of the Hall.
We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cau=
se
was on. He told us Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was
doing in it. He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as=
he
could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he said, o=
ver
for good.
Over for good!
When we heard this unaccountable answer, we lo=
oked
at one another quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will =
had
set things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? It
seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!
Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon to=
ok
place in the crowd, and the people came streaming out looking flushed and h=
ot
and bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all exceeding=
ly
amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than =
from
a court of justice. We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew, a=
nd
presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out--bundles in bags,
bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all
shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for=
the
time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out
more. Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing
Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person who was
standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over. Yes, he said, it =
was
all up with it at last, and burst out laughing too.
At this juncture we perceived Mr Kenge coming =
out
of court with an affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr Vholes, who was
deferential and carried his own bag. Mr Vholes was the first to see us. =
216;Here
is Miss Summerson, sir,’ he said. ‘And Mr Woodcourt.’
‘Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!’ said Mr
Kenge, raising his hat to me with polished politeness. ‘How do you do?
Glad to see you. Mr Jarndyce is not here?’
No. He never came there, I reminded him.
‘Really,’ returned Mr Kenge, ̵=
6;it
is as well that he is NOT here to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good
friend's absence, his indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been
strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened.=
217;
‘Pray what has been done to-day?’
asked Allan.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mr Kenge
with excessive urbanity.
‘What has been done to-day?’
‘What has been done,’ repeated Mr
Kenge. ‘Quite so. Yes. Why, not much has been done; not much. We have
been checked--brought up suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it
threshold?’
‘Is this will considered a genuine docum=
ent,
sir?’ said Allan. ‘Will you tell us that?’
‘Most certainly, if I could,’ said=
Mr
Kenge; ‘but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that.=
8217;
‘We have not gone into that,’ repe=
ated
Mr Vholes as if his low inward voice were an echo.
‘You are to reflect, Mr Woodcourt,’
observed Mr Kenge, using his silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, =
8216;that
this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that th=
is
has been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptl=
y, a
monument of Chancery practice.’
‘And patience has sat upon it a long tim=
e,’
said Allan.
‘Very well indeed, sir,’ returned =
Mr
Kenge with a certain condeseending laugh he had. ‘Very well! You are
further to reflect, Mr Woodcourt,’ becoming dignified almost to sever=
ity,
‘that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions,=
and
forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, abil=
ity,
eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr Woodcourt, high intellect. For many yea=
rs,
the--a--I would say the flower of the bar, and the--a--I would presume to a=
dd,
the matured autumnal fruits of the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndy=
ce
and Jarndyce. If the public have the benefit, and if the country have the
adornment, of this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's wor=
th,
sir.’
‘Mr Kenge,’ said Allan, appearing
enlightened all in a moment. ‘Excuse me, our time presses. Do I
understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?=
8217;
‘Hem! I believe so,’ returned Mr
Kenge. ‘Mr Vholes, what do YOU say?’
‘I believe so,’ said Mr Vholes.
‘And that thus the suit lapses and melts
away?’
‘Probably,’ returned Mr Kenge. =
216;Mr
Vholes?’
‘Probably,’ said Mr Vholes.
‘My dearest life,’ whispered Allan=
, ‘this
will break Richard's heart!’
There was such a shock of apprehension in his =
face,
and he knew Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her forebod=
ing
love sounded like a knell in my ears.
‘In case you should be wanting Mr C., si=
r,’
said Mr Vholes, coming after us, ‘you'll find him in court. I left him
there resting himself a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson.=
217;
As he gave me that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the stri=
ngs
of his bag before he hastened with it after Mr Kenge, the benignant shadow =
of
whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp a=
s if
he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, and his black buttoned-up
unwholesome figure glided away to the low door at the end of the Hall.
‘My dear love,’ said Allan, ‘=
;leave
to me, for a little while, the charge you gave me. Go home with this
intelligence and come to Ada's by and by!’
I would not let him take me to a coach, but
entreated him to go to Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do =
as
he wished. Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with w=
hat
news I had returned. ‘Little woman,’ said he, quite unmoved for
himself, ‘to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater blessi=
ng
than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!’
We talked about them all the morning and discu=
ssed
what it was possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my darling hear=
d my
footsteps, she came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my
neck, but she composed herself directly and said that Richard had asked for=
me
several times. Allan had found him sitting in the corner of the court, she =
told
me, like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away and made as if=
he
would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mou=
th
being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed wh=
en I
went in. There were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan stood beh=
ind
him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be quite destitute of
colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing me, I fully saw, for the
first time, how worn away he was. But he looked handsomer than I had seen h=
im
look for many a day.
I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his
eyes by and by, he said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, ‘Dame
Durden, kiss me, my dear!’
It was a great comfort and surprise to me to f=
ind
him in his low state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said,=
in
our intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had b=
een
a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and wished us all t=
he
joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if my own heart would have
broken when I saw him take my husband's hand and hold it to his breast.
We spoke of the future as much as possible, an=
d he
said several times that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand
upon his feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. ‘Yes,
surely, dearest Richard!’ But as my darling answered him thus hopeful=
ly,
so serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so near--I
knew--I knew!
It was not good for him to talk too much, and =
when
he was silent, we were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of
working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy.
Ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, =
and
whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, ‘Where is
Woodcourt?’
Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes a=
nd
saw my guardian standing in the little hall. ‘Who is that, Dame Durde=
n?’
Richard asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face t=
hat
some one was there.
I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded=
‘Yes,’
bent over Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by=
me
in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. ‘Oh, sir,’ said
Richard, ‘you are a good man, you are a good man!’ and burst in=
to
tears for the first time.
My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat do=
wn
in my place, keeping his hand on Richard's.
‘My dear Rick,’ said he, ‘the
clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now. We can see now. We were all
bewildered, Rick, more or less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?=
’
‘I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall=
be
stronger. I have to begin the world.’
‘Aye, truly; well said!’ cried my =
guardian.
‘I will not begin it in the old way now,=
’
said Richard with a sad smile. ‘I have learned a lesson now, sir. It =
was
a hard one, but you shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.’=
;
‘Well, well,’ said my guardian,
comforting him; ‘well, well, well, dear boy!’
‘I was thinking, sir,’ resumed
Richard, ‘that there is nothing on earth I should so much like to see=
as
their house--Dame Durden's and Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed the=
re
when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there
sooner than anywhere.’
‘Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick,=
’
said my guardian, ‘and our little woman likewise; she and I have been
talking of it this very day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do y=
ou
think?’
Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch =
him
as he stood behind the head of the couch.
‘I say nothing of Ada,’ said Richa=
rd, ‘but
I think of her, and have thought of her very much. Look at her! See her her=
e,
sir, bending over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it
herself, my dear love, my poor girl!’
He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spo=
ke.
He gradually released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven,=
and
moved her lips.
‘When I get down to Bleak House,’ =
said
Richard, ‘I shall have much to tell you, sir, and you will have much =
to
show me. You will go, won't you?’
‘Undoubtedly, dear Rick.’
‘Thank you; like you, like you,’ s=
aid
Richard. ‘But it's all like you. They have been telling me how you
planned it and how you remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It
will be like coming to the old Bleak House again.’
‘And you will come there too, I hope, Ri=
ck.
I am a solitary man now, you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A
charity to come to me, my love!’ he repeated to Ada as he gently pass=
ed
his hand over her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he
vowed within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)
‘It was a troubled dream?’ said
Richard, clasping both my guardian's hands eagerly.
‘Nothing more, Rick; nothing more.’=
;
‘And you, being a good man, can pass it =
as
such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when=
he
wakes?’
‘Indeed I can. What am I but another
dreamer, Rick?’
‘I will begin the world!’ said Ric=
hard
with a light in his eyes.
My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, a=
nd I
saw him solemnly lift up his hand to warn my guardian.
‘When shall I go from this place to that
pleasant country where the old times are, where I shall have strength to te=
ll
what Ada has been to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn child?=
’
said Richard. ‘When shall I go?’
‘Dear Rick, when you are strong enough,&=
#8217;
returned my guardian.
‘Ada, my darling!’
He sought to raise himself a little. Allan rai=
sed
him so that she could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
‘I have done you many wrongs, my own. I =
have
fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty =
and
trouble, I have scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all
this, my Ada, before I begin the world?’
A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss
him. He slowly laid his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round
her neck, and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
this! The world that sets this right.
When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed
Miss Flite came weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their
liberty.
There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these alt=
ered
days, as there is upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that=
Sir
Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace; but it i=
s a
lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any brighter spark of
life it shows soon dies away. It is known for certain that the handsome Lady
Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly
overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence s=
he
was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how=
she
died, is all mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among
the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once occasionally
say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large fans--like charmers reduc=
ed
to flirting with grim death, after losing all their other beaux--did once
occasionally say, when the world assembled together, that they wondered the
ashes of the Dedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the
profanation of her company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very cal=
mly
and have never been known to object.
Up from among the fern in the hollow, and wind=
ing
by the bridle- road among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the
sound of horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester--invalided, bent, and
almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with a stalwart man beside
him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain spot before t=
he
mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse stops of his own accord, a=
nd
Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is still for a few moments before they =
ride
away.
War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, tho=
ugh
at uncertain intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an
unsteady fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
Lincolnshire for good, Mr Boythorn showed a manifest desire to abandon his
right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which Sir Leicester,
conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or misfortune, took in such
high dudgeon, and was so magnificently aggrieved by, that Mr Boythorn found
himself under the necessity of committing a flagrant trespass to restore his
neighbour to himself. Similarly, Mr Boythorn continues to post tremendous
placards on the disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to =
hold
forth vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;
similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by testifying=
a bland
unconsciousness of his existence. But it is whispered that when he is most
ferocious towards his old foe, he is really most considerate, and that Sir
Leicester, in the dignity of being implacable, little supposes how much he =
is
humoured. As little does he think how near together he and his antagonist h=
ave
suffered in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it n=
ow,
is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the satisfaction of b=
oth.
In one of the lodges of the park--that lodge
within sight of the house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out
down in Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwart =
man,
the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling hang upon t=
he
walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a little lame man about the
stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy little man he always is, in the
polishing at harness-house doors, of stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harn=
ess
bosses, anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leadi=
ng a
life of friction. A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old do=
g of
some mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to =
the
name of Phil.
A goodly sight it is to see the grand old hous=
ekeeper
(harder of hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to observ=
e--
which few do, for the house is scant of company in these times--the relatio=
ns
of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards them. They have visitors in =
the
high summer weather, when a grey cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wol=
d at
other periods, are seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are
occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the
park; and when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant eveni=
ng
air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the lodge=
on
the inspiring topic of the ‘British Grenadiers’; and as the eve=
ning
closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while two men pace tog=
ether
up and down, ‘But I never own to it before the old girl. Discipline m=
ust
be maintained.’
The greater part of the house is shut up, and =
it
is a show-house no longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the
long drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my Lady=
's
picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined only in that
part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually contracting and dwindli=
ng
until it shall be no more. A little more, in truth, and it will be all
extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the damp door in the mausoleum which sh=
uts
so tight, and looks so obdurate, will have opened and received him.
Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pink=
er
as to the red in her face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leice=
ster
in the long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her yawn=
s,
of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of the pearl neckl=
ace
between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on the Buffy and Boodle questi=
on,
showing how Buffy is immaculate and Boodle villainous, and how the country =
is
lost by being all Boodle and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no
Boodle (it must be one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the st=
aple
of her reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not app=
ear
to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes broad awake the
moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously repeating her last wo=
rds,
begs with some displeasure to know if she finds herself fatigued. However,
Volumnia, in the course of her bird-like hopping about and pecking at paper=
s,
has alighted on a memorandum concerning herself in the event of ‘anyt=
hing
happening’ to her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an
extensive course of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.
The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney
Wold in its dullness, but take to it a little in the shooting season, when =
guns
are heard in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait =
at
the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of cousins. =
The
debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness of the place, gets i=
nto
a fearful state of depression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows in h=
is
gunless hours and protesting that such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew fler
up--frever.
The only great occasions for Volumnia in this
changed aspect of the place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and
widely separated, when something is to be done for the county or the countr=
y in
the way of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come
out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the exhaust=
ed
old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during three hundred and
sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of antipodean
lumber- room full of old chairs and tables upside down. Then, indeed, does =
she
captivate all hearts by her condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by =
her
skipping about as in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth t=
oo
full of teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she tw=
irl
and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes of the dance.
Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches, with
homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and unassuming, various,
beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular kind of parallel between her a=
nd
the little glass chandeliers of another age embellishing that assembly-room,
which, with their meagre stems, their spare little drops, their disappointi=
ng
knobs where no drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and dro=
ps
have both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem
Volumnias.
For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is=
a
vast blank of overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing the=
ir
hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the window- panes in
monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an old
family of human beings and their ghostly likenesses than of an old family of
echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every s=
ound
and go resounding through the building. A waste of unused passages and
staircases in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send=
a
stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few people =
care
to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, take=
s to
crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a low disorder of the
spirits, and gives warning and departs.
Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself
abandoned to darkness and vacancy; with so little change under the summer
shining or the wintry lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag fl=
ying
now by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and
go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of li=
fe
about it--passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have died away from
the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull repose.
Full seven happy years I have been the mistres=
s of
Bleak House. The few words that I have to add to what I have written are so=
on
penned; then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. N=
ot
without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, on his =
or
hers.
They gave my darling into my arms, and through
many weeks I never left her. The little child who was to have done so much =
was
born before the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and I=
, my
husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name.
The help that my dear counted on did come to h=
er,
though it came, in the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless=
and
restore his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power =
was
mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand and how its
touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope within her, I felt a ne=
w sense
of the goodness and the tenderness of God.
They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl
pass into my country garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I w=
as
married then. I was the happiest of the happy.
It was at this time that my guardian joined us=
and
asked Ada when she would come home.
‘Both houses are your home, my dear,R=
17;
said he, ‘but the older Bleak House claims priority. When you and my =
boy
are strong enough to do it, come and take possession of your home.’
Ada called him ‘her dearest cousin, John=
.’
But he said, no, it must be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, a=
nd
the boy's; and he had an old association with the name. So she called him
guardian, and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by =
no
other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.
It is difficult to believe that Charley
(round-eyed still, and not at all grammatical) is married to a miller in our
neighbourhood; yet so it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I wri=
te
early in the morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to =
go
round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond of her,
and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to do and was in
great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I might suppose time to
have stood for seven years as still as the mill did half an hour ago, since
little Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly what Charley used to be. As to To=
m,
Charley's brother, I am really afraid to say what he did at school in
ciphering, but I think it was decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller,
whatever it was, and is a good bashful fellow, always falling in love with
somebody and being ashamed of it.
Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays wi=
th
us and was a dearer creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of t=
he
house with the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her l=
ife.
Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and lives fu=
ll
two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works very hard, her hus=
band
(an excellent one) being lame and able to do very little. Still, she is more
than contented and does all she has to do with all her heart. Mr Jellyby sp=
ends
his evenings at her new house with his head against the wall as he used to =
do
in her old one. I have heard that Mrs Jellyby was understood to suffer great
mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but I hope=
she
got over it in time. She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which tu=
rned
out a failure in consequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell
everybody--who survived the climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the
rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission
involving more correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Cadd=
y's
poor little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I
believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scan=
ty
intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the afflicti=
on
of her child.
As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I =
am
reminded here of Peepy and old Mr Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House,=
and
doing extremely well. Old Mr Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits his
deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is still
believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of Peepy and is
understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French clock in his
dressing-room--which is not his property.
With the first money we saved at home, we adde=
d to
our pretty house by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardia=
n,
which we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see=
us.
I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in drawing to an =
end,
but when I write of him, my tears will have their way.
I never look at him but I hear our poor dear
Richard calling him a good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest
father; to me he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that=
? He
is my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling, he is
the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel towards him=
as
if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him and so easy with him=
that
I almost wonder at myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost =
his;
nor do I ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my old ch=
air
at his side, Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman--all just the same as eve=
r;
and I answer, ‘Yes, dear guardian!’ just the same.
I have never known the wind to be in the east =
for
a single moment since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name=
. I
remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and he sai=
d,
no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that very day.
I think my darling girl is more beautiful than
ever. The sorrow that has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems =
to
have purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner q=
uality.
Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that she still
wears, teaching my Richard, I feel--it is difficult to express--as if it we=
re
so good to know that she remembers her dear Esther in her prayers.
I call him my Richard! But he says that he has=
two
mamas, and I am one.
We are not rich in the bank, but we have always
prospered, and we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I
hear the people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear=
his
praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night but I know =
that
in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some
fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from the beds of those who
were past recovery, thanks have often, often gone up, in the last hour, for=
his
patient ministration. Is not this to be rich?
The people even praise me as the doctor's wife.
The people even like me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am qui=
te
abashed. I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake,=
as
I do everything I do in life for his sake.
A night or two ago, after bustling about prepa=
ring
for my darling and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow=
, I
was sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, wh=
en
Allan came home. So he said, ‘My precious little woman, what are you
doing here?’ And I said, ‘The moon is shining so brightly, Alla=
n,
and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here thinking.̵=
7;
‘What have you been thinking about, my d=
ear?’
said Allan then.
‘How curious you are!’ said I. =
216;I
am almost ashamed to tell you, but I will. I have been thinking about my old
looks--such as they were.’
‘And what have you been thinking about T=
HEM,
my busy bee?’ said Allan.
‘I have been thinking that I thought it =
was
impossible that you COULD have loved me any better, even if I had retained
them.’
‘'Such as they were'?’ said Allan,
laughing.
‘Such as they were, of course.’
‘My dear Dame Durden,’ said Allan,
drawing my arm through his, ‘do you ever look in the glass?’
‘You know I do; you see me do it.’=
‘And don't you know that you are prettier
than you ever were?’
‘I did not know that; I am not certain t=
hat
I know it now. But I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and =
that
my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and tha=
t my
guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and
that they can very well do without much beauty in me--even supposing--.R=
17;
The End