dickens_bleak.txt

BLEAK HOUSE

BY
CHARLES DICKENS


CHAPTER I
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor
sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As
much 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 long 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 new deposits
to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points
tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits
and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the
tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and
dirty) city. 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 boats. 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 round 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 sinners,
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 brief, 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 afternoon the various solicitors in the cause,
some two or three of whom have inherited 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 for truth
at the bottom of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk
gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions,
affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters' reports,
mountains of costly nonsense, 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
into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep
in through the 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, which 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 exhausts 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 before mentioned? There is the registrar below the
judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty-
bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may 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, and the reporters of the newspapers invariably decamp
with the rest of the regulars 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 sanctuary, 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 litter 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
fallen 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 meantime his prospects in life are
ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from
Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor 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 place 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' clerks and others who know this suitor by
sight linger on the chance of his furnishing some fun and
enlivening the dismal weather a little.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow 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
observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five
minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the
premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause;
innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable 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 and 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 mothers
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 Lane; 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 it
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 hall. 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
eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the
sky rained potatoes, he observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce
and Jarndyce, Mr. Blowers"--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 would be a very
wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of
dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into
many shapes, down 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 nature has been made better by it.
In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, 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 have 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 those who have
contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil
have 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--supposed 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 prisoner is brought
forward in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, "My lord!"
Maces, bags, and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at
the man from Shropshire.
"In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and
Jarndyce, "to the young girl--"
"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"--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
expediency 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 sepulchral 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 man from Shropshire ventures another remonstrative "My
lord!" but the 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
committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up
with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre--why so
much the better for other parties than the parties in Jarndyce and
Jarndyce!
CHAPTER II
In Fashion
It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this
same miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but
that we may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow
flies. Both 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 through a deal of thundery weather;
sleeping beauties whom the knight will wake one day, when all the
stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!
It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours,
which has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you 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 hear 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 town for a few days
previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends 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 Lady Dedlock has been down at what she
calls, in familiar conversation, her "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 islands in it and a surface punctured all over, all day long,
with falling rain. My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremely
dreary. The weather for many a day and night 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 the 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 Walk, all night. On Sundays the little church in the
park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit 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), looking out in
the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge and seeing
the 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 figure of a wrapped-up man coming through
the gate, has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says
she has been "bored to death."
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the 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 shutting 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 there 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 whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low,
perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea
dependent for its execution on your great county families. 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 integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate,
truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly
unreasonable man.
Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older 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 courted her,
is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.
Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that
she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family
that perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But
she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough
to portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added
to these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady
Dedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and
at the top of the fashionable tree.
How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody
knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter 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 might 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 improved 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 "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 she 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, after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house
in town, upon this muddy, 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 acting as legal
adviser of the Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his
office 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 and
aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a
mysterious halo of family confidences, of which he is known to be
the silent depository. There 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 walk 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 never 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 professionaly consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless but
quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses
and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable
intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and where half
the Peerage stops to say "How do you 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 happy 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 noted in
everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class--as
one of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She
supposes herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach
and ken of ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, where
indeed she looks so. Yet every dim little star revolving about
her, from her maid to the manager of the Italian Opera, knows 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 dozen
callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration
before her, 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 place is such a place." "To make this article go down,
gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to their friends the
manufacturers, "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 the tables of my high connexion, sir,"
says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "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 you 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 what is passing in
the Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.
"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.
Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his 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 sofa 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, "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.
Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit.
It is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. 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 not 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 eternal 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 rise up somewhere--like Wat
Tyler.
"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.
Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the
troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with
any new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn,
taking 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--'"
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 that 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 that?"
Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and
her unusual tone.
"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at
him in her careless way again and toying with her screen.
"Not quite. Probably"--Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--
"the legal character which it has was acquired after the original
hand was formed. Why do you ask?"
"Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"
Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens
her face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "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; bells 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 extremely trying, and she
really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."
CHAPTER III
A Progress
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
to my doll when we were alone together, "Now, Dolly, I am not
clever, you know 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 rosy 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
to me when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my
room and say, "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 her all I had noticed since we
parted. I had always rather a noticing way--not a quick 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 brighten. 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 not charming--by my
godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good,
good woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to
morning prayers 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 making 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 ardently 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 retiring 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 never heard of my papa
either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn
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 any 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 seemed 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 home 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 school 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--there were none on mine. My birthday was the most
melancholy day at home in the whole 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 wound 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; not another
sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know
how 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 have 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, "Oh, dear godmother,
tell me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?"
"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 the 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 depart from her--so
frozen as I was!--and added this, "Submission, self-denial,
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, like them, in common sinfulness and
wrath. You are set apart."
I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek
against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend 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 alone 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 repair 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 if 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 place in her
house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more
difficult 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 towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a
widow; and oh, towards her daughter, of whom she was proud, who
came to see her once a fortnight! I was very retired and quiet,
and tried 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 was
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 at me and said, "Come
here, my dear!" He shook hands with me and asked 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-chair,
turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a
nod. Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!"
And I made him 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 nine
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 part 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 repeating 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 frown 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 sent for by
Mrs. Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never
gone away.
"My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge
and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."
I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
"Pray be seated--here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no
use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you who were 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 smoothly, "Aunt in fact, though
not in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble!
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?" said 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,
every 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 exist out of this free and great country. I
should say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce,
Mrs. Rachael"--I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I
appeared inattentive"--amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty
to SEVEN-ty THOUSAND POUNDS!" said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his
chair.
I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was 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. Kenge politely.
"--Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her.
And she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing 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 that 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; "--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 sound 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 his 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 completed,
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 said and by his
affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though
I tried.
"Mr. Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing
his expectation that our young friend will not 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?" proceeded Mr. Kenge. "Take
time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!"
What the destitute subject of such an offer tried 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 could 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 with 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
enough 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 was a very frosty day--I felt so miserable
and self-reproachful that I clung to her 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 the
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 the dear
old doll in her own shawl and quietly laid her--I am half ashamed
to tell 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 the 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 sun, 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 when 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
they would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in
the coach gave me a terrible start.
It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?"
I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a
whisper, "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must 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 coach, 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," 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
side of his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again,
and not afraid 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 looked at him with the
greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,
although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and
calling Mrs. Rachael names.
After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to
me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm 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, like 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 fat geese. There's a pie! Now let's see you eat 'em."
"Thank you, sir," I replied; "thank you very much indeed, but I
hope you won't be offended--they are too rich for me."
"Floored again!" said the gentleman, 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 out 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 afterwards, 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 looked up at the window
and said, "Miss Donny."
"No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."
"That is quite right," said the lady, "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 got inside and were driven away.
"Everything is ready for you, Esther," 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," said 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 confused 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
uncertain 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 great
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 Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round
the dial of the clock, and everything was done at its appointed
moment.
We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss 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 began to know more, I
taught more, and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which 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 were 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 have been
better if I had never been born. When the day came round, it
brought me 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 except 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 written such a letter. I had received a formal
answer acknowledging its receipt and saying, "We note the contents
thereof, which shall be duly communicated to our client." After
that I sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how
regular my accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to
write 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 writing, which I supposed to be Mr.
Kenge's.
It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write 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 emotion this letter
caused in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for
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 heart 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 were
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, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and
when others asked me only to write 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 coach 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!"--could 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 very often, "Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT
do!" I cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I
was longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had
cooled my eyes with lavender water, it was 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
particularly 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 that scarcely anything was to be seen.
"Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "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 darkest streets that ever
were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting 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 silent 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 really was a
churchyard outside under some cloisters, for I saw the gravestones
from the staircase window.
This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman 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. Not that it's
requisite, I am sure," said the young gentleman civilly.
"Going before the Chancellor?" I said, 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 its 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 was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down,
took a peep at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and
looked at the room, which was not half 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 anything 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 thought 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, talking.
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 all three coming
together for the first time in such an unusual place was a thing 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 Chancery lion.
We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a
bag wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could
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 Chancellor 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 into 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 with 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 even 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 pride of parents.
"The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning
over leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."
"Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
"A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.
"But not a dreary place at present, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
"And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in--"
"Hertfordshire, my lord."
"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.
"He is not, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
A pause.
"Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?" 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," 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 thought (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 lady. Miss Summerson."
His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy
very graciously.
"Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"
"No, my lord."
Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His
lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice 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 again I can't
help it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship
spoke 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? Presently 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
and 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 aloud. "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 companion for the young
lady, and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the
circumstances admit."
He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, 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. "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 asked Ada.
"No!" said she. "Don't you?"
"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 don't know
what's to come of it."
"Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking 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 little 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 humour the poor old
lady, that we were much obliged to her.
"Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is
Conversation Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your 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 lady, 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 judgment. 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,
"Youth. And hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation
Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!"
CHAPTER IV
Telescopic Philanthropy
We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when 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 his back to the fire
and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.
Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of
character 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 (until something else attracts
her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general
cultivation of the coffee berry--AND the natives--and the happy
settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant
home population. Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work
that is considered likely to be a good work and who is much sought
after by philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of
Mrs. Jellyby."
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 with a droll look.
"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge 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. Kenge, 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 you, Miss
Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the
(glad 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 safely there."
"Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know."
"I can't say I know where it is, for I come 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 there 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!" said I.
"Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," 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 compliment, 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 and 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 plate on the door
with the inscription JELLYBY.
"Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, 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; "let 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) that 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-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in
pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom;
I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I
therefore supposed 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 up, 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 whole 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 child's head
recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards
said 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 look a long way off. As if--I am
quoting Richard again--they could see nothing nearer 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 can 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 space was railed across with a
lattice-work of stay-lace--like a summer-house.
The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, 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 sat 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 were 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 room 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 time
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. Jellyby. "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
thoughts 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 over. You may go into
Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
Africa."
I said, "No doubt." I meant as to Holborn.
"If you would like," said Mrs. Jellyby, 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, while I
finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
amanuensis--"
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 presenting
himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most--
the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
serene composure with which she said everything, "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 utter
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. "And our dinner hour is
nominally (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss 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 on my bed.
Ada and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between.
They were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my
window was fastened 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," returned 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 the haste we could to
get down to the fire again. But all the little children had 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 and 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 Little 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 "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 open door with Mrs. Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully.
It smoked to that degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and
crying with the windows open for half 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 that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous
manner.
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.
Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very
deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We
had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and
a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak
of, but it was almost raw. The young 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 cook, 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 consequence 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' committees 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 business 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 his 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 colonists
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 hundred 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 mind, 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
seemed 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 have wished to be, however, for
Peepy and the other children came flocking about Ada and me in a
corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down
among 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 bed. 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 room 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 midnight before we found an opportunity of going to
bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking
coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
"What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How
curious of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it,
and I can't understand it at all."
"What?" asked Ada with her pretty smile.
"All this, my dear," said I. "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 and had won
her heart. "You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so
cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a
home out of even this house."
My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised
herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that 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 upon 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 Ada.
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died,
she remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she
spoke of him and of the noble generosity of his character, which
she had said 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 HAD 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 don'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 and an egg-cup in
the other.
"Good night!" she said very sulkily.
"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 put 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 dance, 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 able 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 mildly as I
felt towards her.
"It's disgraceful," she said. "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 know it was!"
"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
"You do," she said very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You
do!"
"Oh, my dear!" said I. "If you 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 stooped 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 in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I
thought it better not to speak.
"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 ground 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 said, "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 day. 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 all.
CHAPTER V
A Morning Adventure
Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed
heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt
that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was
sufficiently forewarned 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," 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 leaves him out
the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes
there 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," returned 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 during 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, throwing 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 mentioned, 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 walk.
So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may
mention that 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. "Now, you are my witness, Miss
Summerson, I say I don't care--but if he was to come 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 ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!"
"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the
vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your 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, so 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 come, and come, and come,
and I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. 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 saved the
disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada
coming 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 while I admired the long successions
and varieties of streets, the quantity of people 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 swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
"So, cousin," said the cheerful voice 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 Great 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, "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 pleasure 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 thoughtlessness 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, dear, 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
greater 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 trees 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 fulfilled 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 lived so close by that
we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments 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 written KROOK, RAG AND
BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN
MARINE STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red
paper mill at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old
rags. In another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another,
KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another,
WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT. In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES
BOUGHT. Everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold
there. In all parts of the window were quantities of dirty
bottles--blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-
water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles; I am
reminded by mentioning the latter that the shop had in several
little particulars the air of being in a legal neighbourhood and of
being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the
law. There were a great many ink bottles. There was a little
tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the door, labelled
"Law Books, all at 9d." Some of the inscriptions I have enumerated
were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen in Kenge and
Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received from the
firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to
do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable
man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with
neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook, within.
There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. A
little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old crackled parchment
scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared law-papers. I could have
fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been
hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors
of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The litter of rags
tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale,
hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been
counsellors' bands and gowns torn up. One had only to fancy, as
Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that
yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean,
were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides
by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within 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 shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight
of us. He was short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk
sideways between his shoulders and the breath 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 time. But she was not to be so easily left. She
became so fantastically and pressingly 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
for 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 little 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 tapped her forehead with
her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness 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, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!
Here's lovely hair! I have got three sacks 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 through 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 proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook
shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
"You see, I have so many things here," 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 must 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 THEY 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 Jane!"
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 set her on," said the old
man. "I deal in cat-skins among other general 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, says 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 myself, having to attend court very soon. My
young friends are the wards in Jarndyce."
"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 tone 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 yourself a good deal
about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other
Chancellor!"
"Yes," said the old man abstractedly. "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 Barbary, and the
name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."
"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!"
said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
"Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly 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 well known
there as--she is now," nodding slightly at his lodger. "Tom
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 young 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 him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by
the fire, and company with him. I hadn't hardly got back here when
I heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I
ran out--neighbours ran out--twenty of us cried at once, '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 present hearers. Hi! To be
sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon 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!"
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
shock 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
were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and
empty. There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched
appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood
before.
"Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the
greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards 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 here. 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 there,
some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and
goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.
"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object
that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of
restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. 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, is it not?"
Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect
a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing 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 arguments 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 curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile
and curtsy. "There! We'll let in the full light."
The birds began to stir and chirp.
"I cannot admit the air freely," said 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
consequence 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 soul that it was half-
past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit 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 being a
little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a
previous stoppage 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 here say he has sold himself to
the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money.
Hush!"
She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,
and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe 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 working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead,
and had a piece of chalk 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 little 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,
beginning 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 with 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 me.
When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, 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 aside the chalk. "I have a turn for
copying from memory, you see, miss, though 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, who gave
us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of
yesterday 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 London!" 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 that 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 somewhere, 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 heartache
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."
"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!" said Ada gently.
Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very 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 legs,
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 our 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, and 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.
CHAPTER VI
Quite at Home
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
brilliancy of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of
people whom the pleasanter 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: trees, 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 beautiful horses, furnished with
red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with 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 tinkling,
except when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled
off a little 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, here's an extraordinary
thing!" added Richard, looking closely at the man. "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 me.
These the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading
the name aloud first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom
they came, he briefly answered, "Master, sir, if you please"; and
putting on his hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his
whip, re-awakened his music, and went melodiously away.
"Is that Mr. Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our post-
boy.
"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going 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 that 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, that their
cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness
he performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to
the most singular 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 done her an act of uncommon
generosity and that on her going to his house to thank 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 lasted 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 the house
would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should
see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after a delay, and what
he would say to us, 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 so 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.
By that time we were so anxious and nervous that 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 from head to foot. When we turned out of
the town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy,
who had for a long time sympathized with our heightened
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 the 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 with 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-mill.
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 voice in
the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of
light from 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 give 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
hall 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 have a hand at liberty. A word in
earnest is as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you.
You are at home. Warm yourself!"
Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive 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 glanced (I need not say
with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively,
quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered
iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was
upright, hearty, and robust. 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 recalled 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 him.
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. "But you answer like Ada." Whom I
had not heard. "You all think something else, I see."
"We rather thought," said I, glancing 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 Richard, 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 down," 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 the 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 and 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 than we could possibly have expressed in any
words. He gave an arm to Ada and an arm 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--didn'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.
"Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is
better."
"Then, cousin John--" Ada laughingly began again.
"Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce with great
enjoyment. "Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"
"It did better than that. It rained Esther."
"Aye?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"
"Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping 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 dear! You know, you know, it's true!"
The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin 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."
I felt as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.
"Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
"In the north as we came down, sir."
"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 houses 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 growth 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 blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a
charming little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden,
which room was henceforth to belong to Ada 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-seat, 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 rooms (only two) communicated,
and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps with 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 Hindu chair, which
was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form
something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had
been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From these
you came on Richard's room, 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 standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his
cold bath gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that
you came into another passage, where there were back-stairs and
where you could hear the horses being rubbed down outside the
stable and being told to "Hold up" and "Get over," 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 got 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 courtly 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 whole
process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists.
In my room 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 with cocked-hats to village
steeples, for October. Half-length portraits in crayons abounded
all through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the
brother 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 quaint variety. They agreed in nothing but their perfect
neatness, their display of the whitest linen, and their storing-up,
wheresoever the existence of a drawer, 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
preparations 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 will be more so with
such bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before
dinner. There's no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a
child."
"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."
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 his 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," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance
suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor
are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children
have tumbled up somehow or other. The wind's getting round again,
I am afraid. I feel it rather!"
Richard observed that the situation was exposed 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 coming my way. Come
along!"
Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, 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," said 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 name."
"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 magnitude 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, that 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 and 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 dress (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
appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the usual road of
years, cares, and experiences.
I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole 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 detail. In fact, he said,
he had no head for detail. And he told us, with great humour, 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, "he was perfectly right," the
engagement terminated, and Mr. Skimpole having (as he added with
delightful gaiety) "nothing to live upon but love, fell in love,
and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks." His good
friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him,
in quicker 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-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of
art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn't
much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, 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 world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats,
blue coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons;
go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any 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
singularities but still had his claims too, which were the general
business of the community and must not be slighted. He was quite
enchanting. If I felt at all confused 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 from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why
he was free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted;
he was so very clear about it himself.
"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole 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 responsibility. My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and
he can't cheat me. We have been 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 immense power of
business detail to throw myself into objects with surprising
ardour. 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 African 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 been neglectful of
the adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have
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
opportunity 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 perplexities. Why
should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs when
it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it
therefore."
Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always 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
whether it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he,
who was probably the 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 tribute to the engaging
qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the
first time, should he 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
compared 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 Ada
was touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a
tune to her 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, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I
am afraid."
"Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly.
"I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.
"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 cousins, "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 smile, as if he had been
really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping 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; Richard stood beside
her, bending down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together,
surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught
from the unsteady 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, was as audible as the music.
The mystery of the future and the little clue afforded 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 directed 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 as 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 told 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 looked in at the
door, saying, "If you please, miss, could you spare a minute?"
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!"
"Took?" said I.
"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
I was apprehensive that his illness might be of 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 unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr.
Skimpole stretched upon the bed or prostrate 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, which 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," said Mr. Skimpole with his
agreeable candour, "I never was in a situation in which that
excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which
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 shillings, 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 his 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 would readily do it again,
but I have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty
in help, that I would rather," and he looked at Richard and me,
"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 replying, what would
happen if the money were not produced.
"Jail," said the strange man, coolly 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 may
venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had
entirely washed 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 their power that would settle this?"
"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
"Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who
is no judge of these things!"
"Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "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 drawing 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 rejection of it,
he did not express to me.
"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear 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 utterly
incapable of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only
ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not
deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard 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, which I had saved from
my quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought
that some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly,
without 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 my having this little store and
having no present need of it, and I asked him delicately to inform
Mr. Skimpole, while I should be gone to fetch it, that we would
have the pleasure of paying his debt.
When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and 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 happiness alone affected him. Richard,
begging me, for the greater grace of the transaction, as he said,
to settle with Coavinses (as Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called
him), I counted out the money and received the necessary
acknowledgment. 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 half finished, "I should
like to ask you something, without offence."
I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
"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. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day,
you wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."
"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a
fine day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights
and shadows were passing across the fields, the birds 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 Coavinses with an appearance of strong
resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to
get for it without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
"Then you didn't think, at all events," 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
cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive
Harold Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his
only birthright!' You thought nothing to that effect?"
"I--certainly--did--NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in
utterly renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could
only give adequate expression to it by putting a long interval
between 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. "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 was very fond of the
game and from whom I wished of course to learn it as quickly 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. Skimpole 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 effort 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 hilariously
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 seen 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!" 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 before I sleep. How much
are you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why
did you? How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!"
"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable
in me to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon 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 scrape again next week!" said
Mr. Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with 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 residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son
in difficulties.'"
Richard laughed heartily but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to
shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to
your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I
hope 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 blow 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 absolute child. I told you he
was a child, you know, when I first mentioned him."
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 them in my own.
"Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to
require reminding of it! The whole business shows 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 have 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 glow.
We all confirmed it from our night's experience.
"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! Not even sixpences."
We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me
touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger 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 sleep 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, before 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 that 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 the winds (particularly
that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose)
the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one
evening to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand
him through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in
Mr. Skimpole 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
persuaded 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 earliest 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
bed.
CHAPTER VII
The Ghost's Walk
While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it 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 for it in that
particular), but is in Paris with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky
wings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.
There may be some motions of fancy among the lower 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 artists at them than the
grooms. The old roan, so famous for cross-country work, turning 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 next stall, never stirs beyond his
pitchfork and birch-broom. The grey, whose place 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
opener says, "Woa grey, then, steady! Noabody wants you to-day!"
may know it quite as well as the man. The whole seemingly
monotonous and uncompanionable 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 Dedlock
Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting)
the pony 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 when the
shadows of the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing
and leave him at one time of the day no broader refuge than the
shadow of his own house, 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 attendants
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 spirit, "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 wind has been
very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself--
upstairs, 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 with 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
turkey 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 sufficiently 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, wonderfully 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,
nobody who knows her would have cause to be surprised. Weather
affects Mrs. Rouncewell 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, adorned at
regular intervals with smooth round trees and smooth round blocks
of stone, 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 impossibility 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 till Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some time
before the decease of the pretty 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 away; and
if he were very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run
over, or placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a
disadvantage, he would 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 when 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 provided 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
saucepans and setting birds to draw their own water with the least
possible amount of labour, so assisting them with artful
contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a thirsty canary had only,
in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the wheel 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, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that general
impression of an aptitude for any 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 the baronet. "Mrs. Rouncewell," said Sir
Leicester, "I can never 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 regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousand
conspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in the habit of turning
out by torchlight two or three nights in the week for unlawful
purposes.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature
and art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called
unto him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his
apprenticeship, and home from a journey in far countries, whither
he was sent to enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations
for the venture of this 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. Rouncewell. "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, grandmother."
"Like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle George!
And your dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He
is well?"
"Thriving, grandmother, in every way."
"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? Well, 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 good 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 about me young.
She's an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house
already, very pretty. She lives with me at my table here."
"I hope I have not driven her away?"
"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 acknowledgment 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 such a day as this, for
gracious sake?"
After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-
eyed, dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh 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 quick 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
young 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, "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 London only last night by
the mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off,
this morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they
had heard 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 says 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 she 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 London 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 friend
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 right 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 in 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 the 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 cannot 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. "Who's that?"
"The picture over the fire-place," says Rosa, "is the portrait of
the present Lady Dedlock. It is considered 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 voice. "I'll be shot if it ain't
very curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady 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 magnates. "It's
unaccountable to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how
well I know that picture! I'm dashed," adds Mr. Guppy, looking
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, which 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 death. 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 curious. "What's the story, miss?
Is it anything about a picture?"
"Pray tell us the story," says Watt in a half whisper.
"I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.
"It is not related to visitors; it is almost 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, "because 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 information
and is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend,
guided down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently
is heard to drive away. 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 family 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 blessed 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 gave them information. When any of the country
gentlemen who followed his Majesty's cause met here, it is said
that my Lady was always nearer to the door of their 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," 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: "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 temper. 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, her husband saw her gliding down the
stairs and followed her into the stall where 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 little 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 down, 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 persuasion, 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 heard then."
"And disgrace, grandmother--" says Watt.
"Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold," returns the housekeeper.
Her grandson apologizes with "True. True."
"That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying
sound," says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; "and what
is to be noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is
afraid 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 purpose) 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."
"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."
CHAPTER VIII
Covering a Multitude of Sins
It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of
window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like 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 first they
were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later
stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began
to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have
found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles
became the only incongruous part of the morning, the 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
massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than
seemed compatible with its rugged character. But so from rough
outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene 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, however, 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 too. 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 little rick-yard, and then a dear little
farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its 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 Ada 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 think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he
protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't
at all see why the busy bee should be proposed 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
merit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the
world banging against 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 embodiment 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 the 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 over 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 return with my basket of keys on my arm
when Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room 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-
boxes.
"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "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," said I.
"Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "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 being 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
reassured 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. "That'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 easy, 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 such a good effect that
I folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. 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, "you don't understand this Chancery
business?"
And of course I shook my head.
"I don't know who does," he returned. "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 about
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 was about anything," he
returned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, 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 know, it to
find out--all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have
copies, 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 through such an
infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and
corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a
witch's Sabbath. Equity sends 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 the
signs of his misery upon it."
"How changed it must be now!" I said.
"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its
present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring 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 meantime, 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 rotting door. When I brought
what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have
been blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined."
He walked a little to and fro after saying this 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 dear. Where was I?"
I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
"Bleak House; true. There is, in that city 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 will 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 their 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 over 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 talk 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,
"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 say 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 basket, 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
honesty 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 little 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 shall 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 Hubbard, and Dame
Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became
quite lost among them.
"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's
Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. What'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 himself. 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. "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 it; counsel will have something to say about
it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the
satellites will have something to say about it; they will 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 that 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 turn 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 tact 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."
I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was
attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me.
I had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to
Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would
do my best, though 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 laugh I ever heard.
"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we
may have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding
word. Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"
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 put 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 and 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 away to look for Ada.
From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, 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 growlery 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 getting 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 lives in
dealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory--
shilling 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 wanted autographs, they
wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had--or had not.
Their objects were as various as their demands. They were going to
raise 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 elevation attached) the Sisterhood of
Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs.
Jellyby, they were going to have their secretary's portrait 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, the Daughters of Britain, the
Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the 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 for this rapacious
benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, 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 and that it invariably interrupted Mr.
Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, 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
people 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 glad 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 wanting 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 make 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 Joy, 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 mentioned, 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," 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 voice 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 prominent--"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 family 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) that 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 prettily 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 they are with
me during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I
am a Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady;
I am on the local 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 frivolous; 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
manifested 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," 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 young family
are concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound.
That is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put
down my mite first; 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."
Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose
Mr. Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle,
would Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication
to Mr. Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this,
but it came into my head.
"You are very pleasantly situated here!" 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 spectacles
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 fervid, 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 chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a
little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket
on it, "by this time you have found me out, 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 consciousness
after what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the
colour of my cheeks.
"Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in
my character. I am aware that it is 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 enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so
accustomed and inured to hard work that I don't know what fatigue
is."
We murmured that it was very astonishing and very 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 tired; you cannot tire me if
you try!" said Mrs. Pardiggle. "The quantity 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
seen 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 have
your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's
very soon."
At first I tried to excuse myself for the present 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. That 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, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older
than I, and had great experience, and was so very military in her
manners.
"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said 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 going 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 objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada,
and I followed with the family.
Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud
tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker'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 occasion 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 added sulkily "By her!"), he
pinched me and said, "Oh, then! Now! 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, stamped upon my toes.
And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having the whole 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-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming
purple. I never underwent so much, both 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 house, 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 minding
their own business and not troubling their heads and muddying their
shoes with coming to look after other people's.
Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral
determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy
habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have
been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the
farthest corner, the ground-floor 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 too 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 the 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. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool
and knocking down another. "We are all here."
"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the
man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked 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!" growled 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-washin. 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 and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so
much the better for them, and for us besides. Have I read the
little book wot you left? No, I an't read the little book wot you
left. There an't nobody here as knows how to read it; and if there
wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me. It's a book fit for a babby,
and I'm not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I shouldn't
nuss it. How have I been conducting of myself? Why, I've been
drunk for three days; and I'da been drunk four if I'da had the
money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I don't never
mean for to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I did;
the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get that
black eye? Why, 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. Pardiggle,
who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible
composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his
antagonism, pulled out 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 have 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 notice of us whatever, except when the young man
made the dog bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was
most emphatic. We both felt painfully sensible that 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
know, 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 much 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 desolate
island.
We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs.
Pardiggle left off.
The man on the floor, then turning his head round 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 little vortex in the
confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.
Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others
to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and
all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then
proceeded to another cottage. I hope 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 wholesale 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 fire 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 thing! The suffering,
quiet, pretty little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry
for the mother. I never saw a sight so pitiful as this before!
Oh, baby, baby!"
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
mother, 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, "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; but when
she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no
beauty. 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 women, 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 such people is almost hidden from us. What
the poor are to the poor is little known, 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 (though 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 sister 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.
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?" she 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."
"Do you mean your husband?" said I.
"Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, quite 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
effort 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 poor 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 with 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 more.
How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon
the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around
the child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head--
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 perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all
unconscious of the woman who replaced 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,
Jenny!"
CHAPTER IX
Signs and Tokens
I don't know how it is I seem to be always writing 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 use. 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 read together, and worked, and practised, and
found so much employment for our time 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. Although he
was one of the most restless creatures in the world, he certainly
was very 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 used 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
relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one
another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing
how it interested me.
"Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," Richard
would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, 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 away at those books and instruments and then galloping up
hill and down dale, all the 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 shining 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 relation 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 wish 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 cause. He'd find himself growing thin, if he
didn't look sharp!"
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that 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 manner 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 talked to me as if he had saved
or realized that amount, would form a sum in simple addition.
"My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?" he said to me when he wanted,
without the least consideration, to bestow five 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 deny 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."
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 abundantly even without Ada's influence; but with it,
he became one of the most winning 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 thinking 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 did, for one--would Boythorn at all
interfere with what was going forward?
"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence 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 then 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.
"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," 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 least
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 voice.
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 what 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 take 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 me, "will be here this afternoon, my dear."
I took care that the necessary preparations were 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 the hall-door suddenly burst open
and the hall resounded with these words, uttered 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 consummate 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. Jarndyce 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. Jarndyce.
"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 perfidy, 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 would 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 his 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 summits 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 keeping 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 presently we heard him in his
bedroom thundering "Ha, ha, ha!" and again "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 him
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
figure 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 seemed 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 as he sat at dinner,
whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led by 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 bird in Europe!" replied the
other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! 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
attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the
most astonishing birds 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 his
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.
"By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very 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 bones
rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by
fair means 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 eating out of his hand.)
"I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at
present," returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, "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 cauldron 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 father 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 another 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!" 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 reassured 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
comfortable distance."
"Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.
"By my soul," exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, 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 carving. The fellow, by
his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me 'Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr. Lawrence
Boythorn, 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, Baronet, 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-engine 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 myrmidons 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 assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!"
To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, 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 its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought
him the gentlest. To hear 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, but that his whole existence
was a summer joke.
"No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock!
Though I willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that
Lady Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I
would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet 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 coxcomb 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 have 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 forethought for every one
about her." (They all encouraged me; they were determined 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 evening, 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 showed 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 and 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 have 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, when 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 graces of youth. But I fell asleep
before I had succeeded, and dreamed of the days when 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 dreamed of that period of my life.
With the morning there came a letter from Messrs. 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
bills, 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 advantage 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 which, 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 ride, 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 would 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, "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 would be
to wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to
leave him 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 voice 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 voice, "he's a
Tartar!"
"Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.
Mr. Guppy sat down at the table and began nervously 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. "I have only waited to see that you
have everything you want. Is there anything 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 won't make any use of it to
my detriment at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If our
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, "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."
"Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it--that's quite sufficient." All
this time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead 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
wine, miss, I think it might assist me in getting on without a
continual choke that 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 Carboy'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 present, 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 behind 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 so.
"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; "you have asked me to hear you out,
and I beg you to conclude."
"I will, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "As I love and honour, so likewise
I obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before
the shrine!"
"That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the
question."
"I am aware," said Mr. Guppy, leaning 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 up 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 life. Blest with your hand, what
means might I not find of advancing your interests 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
confidence, and you set me on?"
I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be
my interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination,
and he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to
go away immediately.
"Cruel miss," said Mr. Guppy, "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 the 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 and down of an evening opposite Jellyby's house only
to look upon the bricks that 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 alone 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," said I, rising and putting my hand
upon the bell-rope, "to do you or any one 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 Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's
business."
"Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr. Guppy, 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, for 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 hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be
sufficient."
I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, 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, finishing 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 thought I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when
I went upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to
laugh about it and then surprised 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 touched than it ever
had been since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the
garden.
CHAPTER X
The Law-Writer
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 legal process; in skins and rolls of
parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-
brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, 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 string 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 inscription in fresh
paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the time-honoured and not
easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For smoke, which is the
London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's name and clung to
his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite quite overpowered
the parent tree.
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 would 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 Court, 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, something 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 should approach perfection, lace her up
every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for a
stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
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 fair subject on his arrival at man's
estate, entered into two partnerships at once. 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 one flesh, but, to
the neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing 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 scrubby clump of black hair sticking out
at the back. He tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his
door in Cook's Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico 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 beneath his feet, at such times, as from a
shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently arise
complainings and lamentations in the voice already mentioned; 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-giving 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 ought 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 young woman from a workhouse (by
some supposed to have been christened Augusta) who, although she was
farmed or contracted for during her growing time by an amiable
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 drawback of
fits, and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her
patron saint 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 establishment is, in Guster's eyes, a
temple of plenty and splendour. She believes the little 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 view it commands of Cook's Court at one end (not
to mention a squint into Cursitor 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 practical mysteries of the
business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
licenses 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 both sides, and
even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
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 observed
that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a
shining example 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
about 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 under 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 Masters of the Rolls who are
deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of telling
the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say that a brook "as clear as
crystial" once ran right down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstile
really was a turnstile, leading slap away into the meadows--gets
such a flavour of the country out of this that he never wants to go
there.
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 state, 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 painted 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 the 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 binding;
everything that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible.
Very few loose 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 requires 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 anything more explicit.
Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight, but
nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's, Law-
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 the afternoon, and a
balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers 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 subterranean 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. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's
two daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the 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. Tulkinghorn.
Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears,
glad to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread
and veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great
torture 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."
"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man
round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." 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."
"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his
hand, modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as 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 other 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 sheets 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 stopped 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."
Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the law-
stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
"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. "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 Wednesday night, eight
o'clock; brought in Thursday morning, half after nine."
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 window 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 takes 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?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
"Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."
"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he
lived?"
"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges 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!"
Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps
at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back 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 wild 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 through 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 shop 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?" says 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 Fields at present. He
goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook,
and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle
or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back
part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another
blot-headed candle in his hand.
"Pray is your lodger within?"
"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.
"Male. The person who does copying."
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," says 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-rail. 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 Krook, going up a step or two.
"What do they say of him?"
"They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know
better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so
black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that
bargain 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 have 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
as if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the
corner by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a
wilderness marked with a rain of ink. 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 cheeks
of a starved man. The floor is bare, except that one old mat,
trodden to shreds 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 confusion of dirty patchwork,
lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just
within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt 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 hair 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.
CHAPTER XI
Our Dear Brother
A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"
"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?"
"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 spare, 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. "Does the man
generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice.
"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. Not so
the eyes upon the bed.
"God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops
the heavy hand he has taken 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 Flite 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 calls, "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 the old portmanteau and steal back again.
"Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" 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 broad Scotch tongue.
"Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at
them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"
Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) 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."
"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," 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 established his
pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
"I knew this person by sight very well," 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 answers Krook, taking the candle from
the surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest
relation he had."
"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is
no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
here now," taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen
people."
"Do you think he did it on purpose?" 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 casts 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 young man, resuming his
examination. "It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as
Pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should
think 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?" 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--from the young surgeon's professional interest in death,
noticeable as being quite 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 thinking 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 of a delicate musical instrument be inferred
from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
professional way.
"I looked in here," he observes, "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 woman, who has often seen him in court, and
whom he has often seen, and who proposes, 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 counterpane. 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 has 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, coughing his apologetic cough behind
his hand, "I really don't know what advice 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," says 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. Snagsby after prefacing his reply
with his cough of general propitiation, "that 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 thousand 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 bottle shop--"
"That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.
"About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he
came into our place one morning after breakfast, 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 her 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, "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 took by
something about this person, whether by his being unshaved, or by
his hair 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 little woman hasn't a good ear for
names," proceeds Mr. Snagsby after consulting 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 into job-work at our place; and
that is the most I know of him except that he was 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 politely 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 you? 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, "look over the room for him. He
will get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here,
I'll wait if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf,
if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you
will hold the candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see
whether there is anything to help you."
"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does 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,
smelling 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 with 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 practical 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 and 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 "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, exchanges 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 immediately 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 and parlours, examining the inhabitants, always shutting the
door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy
exasperating the public. Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public
loses interest and undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill
youthful voices with having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a
popular song to that effect and importing that the boy was made into
soup 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 immediately 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 fitting, 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 beadle 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 witnesses 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.
And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain
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 fair, 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 that 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, hovering
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
frequents 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 bell, which rather gives the majesty of the
court the appearance of going to be hanged presently.
Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony 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 takes 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 considered 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 certain man. Evidence will be given
before you as to the circumstances attending that 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. The 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 special 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, according to the latest examples.
Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury 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, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when
discovery of the death was made, but he could only repeat the
evidence you have already heard from the surgeon, 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. Piper 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 the 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 being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins
may be brought forard for she is here 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 called after him close at his eels). Never
however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far
from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called 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
down 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 ragged. 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 knows 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 arter 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 the 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 know. We can't take THAT in a
court of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. 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 witness.
Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in
the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,
found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to
lead 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 doubt. 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 corner.
That graceless creature only knows that the dead 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 spoken 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 coming past your
crossing with my little woman--I mean a lady--" says Mr. Snagsby
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 cloud
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 Sol'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
support 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 life that came off here to-day." Is
much applauded and encouraged; goes out 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 face, 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. Snagsby 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, preceded 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 warning "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, though 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 crow (so
men crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what
cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that
daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
Then the active and intelligent, who has got into 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 dear brothers and sisters who hang about
official back-stairs--would to heaven they 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 where 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
death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down
a foot or two, 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 and 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 above 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 here!"
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.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and
makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, 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: "He wos wery
good to me, he wos!"
CHAPTER XII
On the Watch
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 brilliant 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 proper
limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect
from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle
woods and approvingly 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 sharp wind, my Lady and
Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman 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 the 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 score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more
Elysian by performing dogs and wooden 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-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring,
and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate--only last Sunday,
my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom 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, let 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 state, 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
inexhaustible 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, "a message to you. Our
stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove 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 copied the
affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her
curiosity. I have seen him.'"
My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
"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 resumes 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,
says 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, with 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 Leicester, whose
countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in
whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the
Radical of Nature 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 carriage as it passes underneath,
some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come 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 putting 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 the darkening mass of
front. But the brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do
that.
Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester's
customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
"How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir
Leicester?"
"In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
"My Lady is looking charmingly well," 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 observation, 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 how pretty you are,
child?" she says, touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and
glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, 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 make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the
days of Queen Elizabeth.
That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but
murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so
beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling
touch that Rosa can feel it yet! 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, whom 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. Rouncewell adds--only "almost" because it
borders on impiety to suppose that 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 daughter now, a grown young
lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only 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 Dedlock family have always
reason to be."
"Well," says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their prayer-
books a certain passage for the common people about pride and
vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for
joking."
"Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt, "and I humbly
ask his pardon. 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 traveller
might?"
"Surely, none in the world, child."
"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I have an inexpressible
desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.
But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that
burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is holding
forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, 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 certain
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 corners of her eyes without turning her
head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she
is in an ill humour and near knives. Through all the good 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 ridicule 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, this puppet,
caressed--absolutely caressed--by my Lady on the moment of her
arriving 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, how 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, even among her
countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment
expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness
of face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look,
which intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my
Lady's mirrors when my Lady is not among 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 hunter 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 openings 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 comprehends 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 now (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.
There are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,
swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by
other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their
noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake
into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is
troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But
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 ARE at Chesney Wold this
January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
have set up a dandyism--in religion, for instance. Who in mere
lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy
talk about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in
the things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low
fellow should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after
finding it out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and
faithful by putting back the hands upon the clock of time and
cancelling a few hundred years of history.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,
but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze 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 tailors' patterns of past
generations and be particularly careful not to be in earnest 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 be; 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 formation 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 with 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 enough 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)
because 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 shipwreck of
the country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of
it that 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, you 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
circles, as with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very
strange appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this
difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the
greater danger of their breaking in.
Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of
injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not
to he 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 bestowed 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 drop into this room as if he
had never been out of it since he was last seen there, 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 his 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 Lady 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."
"That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright
groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened 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 usual 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 devoted 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?" says 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 Lady 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!"
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," 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," 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. That, 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. Boythorn. 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 ago, would probably
have been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, 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 Dedlock addresses Mr.
Tulkinghorn for the first time.
"You sent me a message respecting the person 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 again. 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 carelessly. "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. The fire glows
brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,
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--"
"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 miserable, poverty-stricken place
--and I found him dead."
"You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I
think the less said--"
"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady
speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. 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 Leicester. "Really!"
"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
"Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say--"
"No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
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 asks, "was this deplorable
creature?"
"Very difficult to say," returns the 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?"
"They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his
name."
"Not even any one who had attended on him?"
"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found
him."
"Without any clue to anything more?"
"Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old
portmanteau, but--No, there were no papers."
During the utterance of every word of this short 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 station.
"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her
mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the
kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds 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--
again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same
exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to
be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. 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.
CHAPTER XIII
Esther's Narrative
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 was ready for anything. When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether
he might not already be 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 him
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 character," 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
responsible 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, without knowing what chance--and dismissing
everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of
much older and steadier people may be even changed 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 venture 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 manner. 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 knowledge 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 had 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 ever
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 way?" 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 before.
"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 healing 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 consideration, 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 about 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 spirit and gallantry
devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is
in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary
task-masters 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?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
"No!" cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. "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
quicksilver 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 inestimable 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 in 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 looking round upon us with
a most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "Ha, ha, ha!" over
and over again, until anybody else might have been expected 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 down 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 remembered to have seen him do when I was a
little girl.
"Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. "Yes. Well! 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 glance at Richard.
"Oh, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. "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
that 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 Richard 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 feelingly and smoothly over those
expressions, "I would submit to you that we have only to inquire
into the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now,
with reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent
practitioner. 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. "As to situation, now. Is there
any particular feeling on that head?"
"N--no," said Richard.
"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge again.
"I should like a little variety," said Richard; "I mean a good range
of experience."
"Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr. Kenge. "I think this may
be easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce? We have only, 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 number. 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 guardianship of the court. We shall soon
be--shall I say, in Mr. Richard's own light-hearted 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 shop.
London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours
at a time, 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 with 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 all 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 time forth, we
never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit,
always 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 expected 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 me. 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 it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing
naturally. As to escaping 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 there
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. Then I feared that the
young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.
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 home, he haunted a post opposite
our house. The upholsterer's where we lodged being 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 catching 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 helped 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 poetry a little, and botanizing a little.
She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,
and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her
accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there
was any harm in it.
Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, 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. "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, who 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 the 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 married," pursued Mrs. Badger,
"we were married on the same day of the year. I had 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," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take
leave to correct him and say three distinguished men."
"Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs.
Badger.
"And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you? That
without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction
as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many
opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak--no, really," said
Mr. Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable--as to put my
reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain
Swosser and Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr.
Jarndyce," continued Mr. Bayham 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.
Swosser. Over the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of
Mrs. Bayham Badger IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no
copy."
Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very
genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and
the professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and as Ada and I had
the honour 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 claret.
"Not that claret!" he said. "Excuse me! This is an occasion, and
ON an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.
(James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that
was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago.
You will find it very curious. My dear, I shall he happy to take
some of this wine with you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your
mistress, James!) My love, your health!"
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 Swosser
before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the
time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,
given to the officers 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 occasionally 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 have 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 way of mentioning my eyes."
Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
"It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she
resumed with a plaintive smile. "I felt it a good deal at first.
Such an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined
with science--particularly science--inured me to it. Being the
professor's sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost
forgot that 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 never
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 Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and
water!" when the entrance of the gentlemen 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 each 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!"
"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?" said I, pretending to consider.
"It's about--" said Ada in a whisper. "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!"
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 but in a little
glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just
yet.
"He says--I know it's very foolish, we are both so young--but he
says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves 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 waited to be told."
"But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?"
returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the
hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no
very freely.
"And now," said I, "I know the 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, shaking her head.
"Why, you never mean to say--" I was 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, too, 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?"
"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 fallen in love
with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so
trustful, 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 fell 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 endearing 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. "I can guarantee that there is no
secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday."
"Aye? And what is it, Esther?"
"Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when first we came
down to Bleak House? When Ada was 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. "Don'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 his 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 Richard 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. "That'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 broken, 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 each
other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood
will excuse me, Rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for
there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your
friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But
I wish and hope to retain your confidence if 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 strongest power over us both--rooted in
respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthening every day."
"Dear cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place
can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have
rendered to him is transferred to you."
"Come!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now for our assumption. Now we lift
our eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! 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
efforts. Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner.
Constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is
nothing, without constancy in every kind 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 small, 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," replied 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 even for her love," retorted
Richard proudly.
"Well said!" cried Mr. Jarndyce. "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 you 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 back 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
hand 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 them 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 they went out, and the sun was clouded over.
"Am I right, Esther?" said my guardian when they were gone.
He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was 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 friend and
counsellor always near." And he laid his hand lovingly upon my
head.
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. "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 there 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, Ada asked me if I did not, and I said
yes.
CHAPTER XIV
Deportment
Richard left us on the very next evening to begin 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,
more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both
thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all
their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard
once a week, making my faithful report 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 keys 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, "why not?"
"It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.
"Oh! I don't know about that," returned Richard, "but at all
events, it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared
anything in heaven knows how many years."
"Too true," said Ada.
"Yes, but," urged Richard, answering 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 it. We only say that
if it SHOULD make us rich, we have no constitutional objection 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."
"No," Said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."
"Well, well," cried Richard, "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," said 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 home. 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 considerable 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 back in such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my guardian on 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 had 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 frizzling it with her fingers.
Everything the dear child wore was either too large for him 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, the boots of a ploughman, while his legs, so crossed
and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare
below a very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two
frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on
his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr.
Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too
large. Most extraordinary 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.
She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure after
all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by the way in
which she glanced first at him and then at us.
"Oh, dear me!" said my guardian. "Due east!"
Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.
Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, "Ma's compliments, and
she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the
plan. 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 compliments." With which she presented it
sulkily enough.
"Thank you," said my guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.
Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!"
We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if
he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at
first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to
take him 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 brother!"
I tried to say something soothing.
"Oh, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," 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. "I'll never take pains to
dress you any more."
"Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child
and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
"It seems a little thing to cry about," 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
look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright
as he is!"
Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his 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, "because 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
bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied.
There'll he nobody but Ma 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 weather the storm.
I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send
into 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 declare 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, Miss Summerson," replied
Miss Jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? His family
is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs,
confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's end
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," 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 slave all my
life, and I won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty
thing, 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 you 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 her head. "Not at all likely! I
know I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am
engaged."
"Without their knowledge at home?" said I.
"Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," 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 Caddy. 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 laughing (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," 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 to
Mr. Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street."
"And was it there, my dear--" I began.
"Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "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," 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 break 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?" returned Miss Jellyby,
opening her eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."
We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had 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 compassion, and as I was only a listener, I
undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging
Peepy's pardon with a kiss and assuring him that she hadn't meant
to do it.
"That's the state of the case," said 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 write
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."
"It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!" said I.
"Very gentlemanly indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated almost
everywhere for his deportment."
"Does he teach?" asked Ada.
"No, he don't teach anything in particular," replied Caddy. "But
his deportment is beautiful."
Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance
that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt 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 that 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 name is Prince;
I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he
didn't christen himself. Old Mr. Turveydrop had him christened
Prince in remembrance 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 little
appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with you, because
I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she likes me.
If you could see young 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," said Caddy,
who had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very
glad--very glad."
It happened that we had arranged with my guardian 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 the 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 on 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 Peepy up a little with
the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hair-
brush, and went out, bending our steps towards Newman Street, which
was very near.
I found the academy established in a sufficiently 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 other 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 house 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 bare, resounding room smelling of stables,
with cane forms along the walls, and the walls ornamented at
regular intervals with painted lyres and little cut-glass 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 Summerson, 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 was like his mother and that
his mother had not been much considered or well used.
"I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low
to me. "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 the 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 lustre 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, and 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 his ears so sunk into it, that it
seemed as though be 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 white 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 had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a
snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, 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.
"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."
"Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "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 permission, 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
conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step
and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His
distinguished father did nothing 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 believe that it's HIS name
on the door-plate?"
"His son's name is the same, you know," said I.
"He wouldn't let his son have any name if he could take it from
him," returned the old lady. "Look at the son'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 person. I asked, "Does
he give lessons in deportment now?"
"Now!" returned the old lady shortly. "Never did."
After a moment's consideration, I suggested that 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 lady, becoming more
and more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt
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 but 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 mainspring 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 who 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 having 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!" 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 homage she was
rendering. "He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And
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 with 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 without 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. Turveydrop 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," he said, kissing his right
glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, "will look
leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish--
polish--polish!"
He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit 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 him to make
without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes "--we are 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. Perhaps 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?' But
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. "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 gentlemen would be perpetuated
here," said I.
"You are very good." He smiled with 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 that I should
disparage my dear child, but he has--no deportment."
"He appears to be an excellent master," 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 ARE things--" He took another pinch of snuff
and made the bow again, as if to add, "This kind of thing, for
instance."
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. Turveydrop, "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," 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 elapsed, 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, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a
dozen words.
"My dear," said Mr. Turveydrop benignly 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 was 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," said Prince. "I can take a
morsel of dinner standing and be off."
"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, father?"
"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 take 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 manner, 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
were 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 irate with his father than the
censorious old lady.
The father opened the room door for us and bowed 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 way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going
to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some
moments, I was so lost in reconsidering 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 been 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 that 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, morning, 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 you, now we are alone,"
continued Caddy, "which I should not have liked 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. So 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 well 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 been 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 looking so neat and pretty and to
feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the whole 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, "let 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, and 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, announcing a room
to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we
proceeded upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an
inquest and that our 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, and 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 as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion
spoke with her cheerfully by the fire.
"I have finished my professional visit," 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, "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. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear"--
she had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always 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 answered 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, and 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
might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the
distress and agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of
the discovery, though too late for 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."
"The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me.
"I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then
confer estates."
"She will be as well in a day or two," said Mr. Woodcourt, looking
at her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other
words, quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"
"Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, 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? That is the great question. Naturally.
Shall I tell you what I think? I think," said Miss Flite, drawing
herself back with a very shrewd look and shaking her right
forefinger in a most significant manner, "that the Lord Chancellor,
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!"
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 fellows, ma'am?" said he in his
pleasant voice. "Have they any names?"
"I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she
promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"
Ada remembered very well.
"Did I?" said Miss Flite. "Who's that at my door? What are you
listening at my door for, Krook?"
The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared
there with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.
"I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said, "I was going to give a
rap with my knuckles, only you're so quick!"
"Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" 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 birds 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, Krook, when I have company?"
"Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."
"Well?" returned Miss Elite. "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 never 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 another."
"I never go there," said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any
consideration). "I would sooner go--somewhere else."
"Would you though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard
upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though
perhaps it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, 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 hurriedly.
The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went
through the list.
"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want,
Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's
the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together,
by 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, "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 proposed 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 secret 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 cat) 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 stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and
against the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets in
several plain hands.
"What are you doing here?" asked my guardian.
"Trying to learn myself to read and write," 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!" 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 House!" 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 enough 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 represented 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 always more or less under the
influence of raw gin, of which he drank great quantities and of
which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt
strongly; 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 guardian 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 tight to the windmill.
I have forgotten to mention--at least I have not mentioned--that
Mr. Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met 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 said--
But I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always
merry.
CHAPTER XV
Bell Yard
While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly 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 and 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 sit for any length of time, with the utmost
enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of
luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up 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. Pardiggle 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 seated 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 various sorts
among this set of people, but nothing respecting them was half so
clear 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 power; 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 meanness 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
down, he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr.
Quale by Mr. Gusher (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 schools of small boys
and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and
requested to come forward with halfpence and be acceptable
sacrifices, I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.
I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole 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 things, and were the more readily believed in since to find
one perfectly undesigning 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 morning in his
usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were
often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself 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 most 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 nothing of the value of money,"
said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this. 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, "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
pound, 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 reason 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 without
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," 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!"
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. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust
himself in such hands--which the present child 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
cost 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 already recalled with
anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on
the sofa that night wiping his head.
"His successor informed me of it yesterday," 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-eyed 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 began 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 stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this,
Skimpole," he said thoughtfully.
Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, 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, or 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 this."
"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, Chancery Lane, where there
was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle.
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?"
"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. "Yes, wery much so. He was never
tired of watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight
or ten hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it."
"He might have done worse," I heard 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, awaited 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. Door right opposite the
stairs." And she handed me the key across the counter.
I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she 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
questions and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly
as we could, but four 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 going 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 which 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 room 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 the door. In a poor
room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture
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; both 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 pinched 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 Charley?"
"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the
child he was nursing. "And Charley."
"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 figure but
shrewd and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a
womanly 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-woman 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 arms 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 this 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 guardian. "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 mournfully.
"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! Charley," said my guardian,
turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
"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!"
"Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at
the face upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a
mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home
and did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I
began 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 when you go out?"
"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs.
Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes 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, "almost 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. "That I do!" And either in this
glimpse of the great pleasure of his life or 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 tear had been shed
among these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their
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 handy 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 child, and I trust
her to Our Father!'"
"He had no other calling?" said my guardian.
"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "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
genteel 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 temper 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 him, I was in doubts. He was
punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," 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 with Mr. Gridley, I could
arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind 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 children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but
certainly not so many as would have been if their 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
always 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 that 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 say, 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 the 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, "but you'll excuse my coming
in. I don't come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! 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 noticed it and respected it.
"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said
mildly.
"May be so, sir, may be so," returned 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 irascible. 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 know. 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 habit 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 they will tell you that the best joke they have is
the man from Shropshire. I," 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," said 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 can 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 tell me that I over-excite myself.
I answer that it's in my nature to do it, under 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, "consider 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 come to me except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was
then to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother some time
afterwards claimed his legacy. I and some of my relations said
that he had had a part of it already in board and lodging 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 three 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 was 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 was 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
legacy. 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 hundreds.
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 treated by
this monstrous system.
"There again!" said Mr. Gridley with 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 court 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 when he makes me
furious by being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for I know
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 don't know what may happen
if I am carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse the
individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before
the great eternal bar!"
His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage
without seeing it.
"I have done!" he said, sitting down 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 Chancellor 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 speak 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 angry with ME."
"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come
then, little one!" He took the youngest child on his 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!"
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
purposes. 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 sorts 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 fallen 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 Coavinses!
How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children)
illustrated 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 sultan, 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
gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what turned
out 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 actually been enabling Coavinses to bring
up these charming children in this agreeable 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 room
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 house to see her run away to her work. I
don't know where she was going, but we saw 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 strife and
sound like a dewdrop in an ocean.
CHAPTER XVI
Tom-all-Alone's
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 worse--the gout--darts
into the old oak bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both
legs.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome 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 memory
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 dying by dying of their
own family gout. It has come down through the illustrious line
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 aristocracy, "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 tenure.
He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and
spasmodically twitched 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 years 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 coloured shadow of
himself and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices
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 reception. 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 was 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
resource 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
when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have
been between many 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, unconscious of the link, if
any link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked 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 still 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 out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling
tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined
human wretch vermin parasites appear, so these ruined 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 rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying
fever and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle,
and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine
gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five
hundred years--though born expressly to do it.
Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the
springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a house 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 ready 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 course. 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 original
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 don'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 darkness 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 people 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, stone blind and dumb!
It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the
churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think
(for perhaps 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 jostled, 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 until 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 witness), 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
the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo's
ideas of a criminal 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 strangest thing of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is
always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of
bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and
the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the
door-step of the Society 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 look up the precious souls among the coco-nuts
and bread-fruit.
He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The
town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and
whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been
suspended 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; very, 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 four, 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 backs 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 satisfaction; 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 margin 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. Gridley,
a disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming.
We are not 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 such 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 many; 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 going 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 leaves 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 look 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 comes 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. Then she slightly beckons to him and says,
"Come here!"
Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.
"Are you the boy I've read of in the papers?" 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 about 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 look, 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. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You
didn't know him, did you?"
"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
"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 each other place was
mentioned.
"Go before me and show me all those dreadful 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; pauses 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?" 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 his 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 before.
After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"
"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this
corner. Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is
the public-ouse where I was took to."
"Go on to the next!"
It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved 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, holding to the bars and looking in.
"Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!"
"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. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look!
There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!"
The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner 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 her, 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 degree 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?" repeats Jo, something troubled
in his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I
should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"
The servant takes as little heed of what he says 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 money 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. His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep
the step and passage with 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 another 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. "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!"
CHAPTER XVII
Esther's Narrative
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
freshness, was always delightful. But though I liked him more and
more the better I knew 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 which 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 fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his
reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most
desirable to direct and train. They were good qualities, without
which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and
water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If
they had been under Richard's direction, they would have been his
friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his
enemies.
I write down these opinions not because I believe 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.
These were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed
besides how right 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 of 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 inquired
after Richard.
"Why, Mr. Carstone," said Mrs. Badger, "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 seemed 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 the liberty of saying so,"
pursued Mrs. Badger, "so perfectly charming. 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 some one contradicting at a public
meeting. "Not at all!"
"Very well," smiled Mrs. Badger, "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
Swosser 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 their
pipe-claying their weekly accounts, but it is otherwise with me, for
blue water 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 husbands 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
large one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent
scientific man seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it
could impart, to throw our house 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, "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 Dingo.
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 replied, "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 how 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 this would never
be the case with Mr. Carstone."
"Does Mr. Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.
"Why," said Mr. Badger, "to tell 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 its 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," 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 swab 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."
"People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the
north of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he
disfigured some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off
fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But
the professor replied that he knew of no building save the Temple
of Science. The principle is the same, I think?"
"Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. "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 ruling passion!"
Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
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 nothing 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 remonstrated.
"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; "because if it will do as
well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope."
"Oh, yes, I hope so," returned Richard, 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 full persuasion that
we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But 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 earnest
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 had no great liking for the
profession."
"Did they though?" said Richard. "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 is, 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 take to it. And I
get too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger's first and second."
"I am sure THAT'S very natural!" cried 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 some very uncommon
circumstances."
"Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps!
Ha! Why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again,
"we travel outside a circle to what I said 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 careless 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 angry 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 you, 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 look 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 was 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
seems 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 MAY
be nothing particular because I may never want 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 the 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," said 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, and 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 interests (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, "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. That is,
you know," said Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is
worth-while, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing
particular!"
This led to our saying again, with a great deal 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 open with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his
disposition was naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought
him out at once (taking us with him) 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
the spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution
that we had shown 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 was very kind and
cordial with him, but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he
had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say, "Cousin
John, 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!" 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, "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 then, than with poor
Rick, for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing!
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 Ada, "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 watched 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 in 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 had given her
clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I
kissed her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil
and happy she looked.
For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat
up working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, 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 dreadfully 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 would have done it
directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket
some ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was
busy with 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 coming 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 forehead as though his hand had been
wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face
looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly,
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 started.
"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 readily 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 could 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 usual 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 little. 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 gently, 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 worth a
thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not
magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature."
I sat down and said after a little effort to be 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 if to
stop me. I well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no
more.
"Nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while,
"have passed since I received a letter from 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 idiosyncrasy 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 her 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 would, 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 the 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 quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in
her darkened life, and replied to the letter."
I took his hand and kissed it.
"It laid the injunction on me that I should 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 would
appoint one. I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own
accord and not 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 would 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," he added, cheerily making
light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every
hour in every day!"
"And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the guardian who is a
father to her!"
At the word father, I saw his former trouble come 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 they 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," 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, little
housekeeper!"
I neither worked nor thought any more that night. 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 was 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 rich. 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 that 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 through 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 been 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 some 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 time
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 that 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 would
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 that 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
much about birth that for a moment I half fancied, and with pain--
But what an idle 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 the 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 so 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 seeing!
"Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"
She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.
"Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied 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 thing?" said Caddy.
"Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her
cheek.
Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that 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 little things lie here," said Caddy, adjusting them with a
careful hand, "because I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder
if somebody left them on purpose!"
"Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly
behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "Oh, yes,
indeed they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort
of thing. Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!"
CHAPTER XVIII
Lady Dedlock
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 didn'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
information with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about
a month, began to cool, 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
Ada, 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 east; "As to Mr.
Jarndyce," Richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the
world, Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for
his 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, with that laughing
face and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could
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, about the time of his going to Mr. Kenge's, that he
needed to have Fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which
he answered in this way, "My jewel of 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 buttons 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 make four pounds--in a lump--by the
transaction!"
It was a question much discussed between him and 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, and 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 furnished
lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately
began to spend 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 purchase that he had in contemplation
which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit
for what it would have cost and made out that to spend anything
less on something else was to save the difference.
While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit 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 with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the
full novelty of his new 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 Lincolnshire 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 were 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 among 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 composedly 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 should 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. "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
for 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 said, 'You are a
man of business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,'
said I, 'now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here
are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have
occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our
mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant 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 money. 'My amiable friend,' said I, 'I never have any money.
I never know anything about money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do
you offer if I give you time?' 'My good 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 with
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
journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in
our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never
thought of paying for anything. 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
considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce to give it him.
It was delightful weather. The green corn waved 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 light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a
delicious fragrance! Late 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 about in
narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and
the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as
hot, as motionless a little 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 flagrant 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 coachman ought to be put to death!"
"IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
address himself. "You know my infirmity."
"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 present 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, which seemed to shake even the motionless
little market-town.
"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we
drove along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the
roadside.
"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha!
Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the
heels here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly
gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the
quarrel, "is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least
surprised 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 prohibition does not extend to us,
does it?"
"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head
to Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat 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
Chesney 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 promise 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 here 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 Dedlock 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 slopes, 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, moss, woods
again, and far away across the openings in the prospect to the
distance 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 passed 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 will see them soon, I dare say, and
I must learn from you on such a point--not you from me."
Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage 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 wall 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 like 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 every 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
meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great
nosegay. Such stillness 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 the 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 chimney 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 maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose
duty was supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to
ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great
bull-dog established in a kennel as his ally, and generally 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: "Beware 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 Boythorn." "Take notice.
That any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass on
this property will be punished with the utmost severity of private
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 would have hurt himself.
"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in
his light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."
"Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth.
"Not in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have
bought a lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose
upon the first intolerable robber who should dare to make an
encroachment 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 mankind 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 until 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 pomps 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 responsible portly
figure of the housekeeper towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of
whom 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 watchful
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 people 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 made 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 resolutely 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 servant, O Lord, for in thy
sight--'"
Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, 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 short space of time.
And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even
to the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
glass after 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, gouty, 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 should 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 still) 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 strangely, 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 accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be
that it did, a little; but the expression 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 know the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at
all, in any one. And 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 only
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
watchfully here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her
coming into the church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last
overcame my strange emotion. After 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 beating 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 obliged to walk
by the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the
pony carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed,
and so did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated
all along (Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as
if he were a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.
"He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it.
So did his father, and his grandfather, and his 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," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
well! I don't object."
"I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.
"Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole 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, and 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 happy
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 outward. 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 else 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 ground. "And he would
probably add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold
Skimpole?'"
"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you 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 would 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 having been on
delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in
the park which be 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 was 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 good 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. Take 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
landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is
one of the pleasanter objects of their existence. I am very
sensible of it, if it be, and I shouldn'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 they
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 following 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 shadows 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 spot, 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 shade in which we sat and made so
precious by the arched perspective through which 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 distance 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 sheltered 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 back, 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
all 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 before 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 upon 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 exposed 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 before 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 when I turned my head.
"I have frightened you?" she said.
No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!
"I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, "I have the pleasure
of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce."
"Your remembrance does me more honour than 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 seeking, 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."
She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed
habitual to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner,
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 attract 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 shoulder 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 too!"
"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 parents?" said my Lady.
"Yes."
"She is very fortunate in her guardian."
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 again.
"Ages have passed since we were in the habit 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 again.
"Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.
"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in
common even before we agreed to differ. It 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 lightning
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," said the keeper, "with the
carriage."
As it drove up, we saw that there were two people 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 hesitating.
"What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "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 her 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. You will allow me to send
the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly."
But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a
graceful leave of Ada--none of me--and put her hand upon his
proffered arm, and got into the carriage, which was a little, low,
park carriage with a hood.
"Come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "I shall want you.
Go on!"
The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers
she had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where 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 manner. Her
retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She
remained perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the
drive, and then, without 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, who, with his wife, was looking
after her. "Hortense is not one of that sort. 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 late 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 peaceful
figure too in the landscape, went Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless,
through the wet grass.